Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, the par­ent com­pa­ny of sev­er­al lo­cal pop­u­lar food es­tab­lish­ments in­clud­ing the KFC and Star­bucks fran­chis­es, has record­ed a loss of $30.9 mil­lion for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed Au­gust 31, 2021.

For the same pe­ri­od, last year Pres­tige Hold­ings record­ed a prof­it of $867,000.

These fig­ures are a stark con­trast to the $26.58 mil­lion and the $21.07 mil­lion in prof­it Pres­tige Hold­ings made for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2019 and 2018 re­spec­tive­ly.

And it’s no sur­prise that the on­go­ing glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­sul­tant mea­sures tak­en to stop its spread are be­ing blamed for the change in for­tunes.

“Dur­ing our third quar­ter, the restau­rant sec­tor re­mained com­plete­ly closed for 48 of the 92 days, af­ter be­ing closed for 32 days in the sec­ond quar­ter, and even­tu­al­ly re­opened on 19 Ju­ly 2021,” Chris­t­ian E. Mout­tet said in his chair­man’s re­port.

“How­ev­er, up­on re­open­ing, the dine-in chan­nel re­mained closed and restau­rants con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with re­duced open­ing hours due to the cur­few re­stric­tions,” he said.

Pres­tige Hold­ings is al­so the par­ent com­pa­ny for TGIF, Piz­za Hut and Sub­way.

“As was the case in the sec­ond quar­ter, the se­vere re­stric­tions to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, es­pe­cial­ly in the sec­tor in which we op­er­ate, con­tin­ue to have an ad­verse im­pact on our com­pa­ny’s sales, op­er­a­tions and, by ex­ten­sion, prof­itabil­i­ty,” Mout­tet said.

Dur­ing the nine-month pe­ri­od, Pres­tige Hold­ings record­ed a 26 per cent re­duc­tion in sales from $666 mil­lion to $491 mil­lion.

Mout­tet said that net cash gen­er­at­ed from op­er­a­tions for the year was $3.65 mil­lion.

“We end­ed the quar­ter with $42 mil­lion in cash, com­pared to $59.7 mil­lion at the be­gin­ning of the year, af­ter ac­cess­ing $40 mil­lion in tem­po­rary fi­nanc­ing in or­der to im­prove liq­uid­i­ty and meet work­ing cap­i­tal re­quire­ments,” he stat­ed.

Mout­tet said Pres­tige was able to open one new restau­rant, a Star­bucks at the Shops at Trinci­ty, and al­so closed its Sub­way restau­rant at Trop­i­cal Plaza in Point a Pierre.

“Fol­low­ing on from 2020, our re­sults re­flect the dif­fi­cul­ties our in­dus­try and oth­er sec­tors in the econ­o­my have ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing 2021 due to the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The virus re­mains present and un­pre­dictable and this has forced us to be more adapt­able and in­no­v­a­tive in our op­er­a­tions and in how we in­ter­act with and reach our cus­tomers.

“We con­tin­ue to have suc­cess with our dig­i­tal strate­gies and in grow­ing our de­liv­ery, dri­ve-thru and curb­side chan­nels. We ex­pect that with our strong brands and op­er­a­tions, when all COVID-19 re­stric­tions are re­moved, our com­pa­ny will be well placed to grow sales and prof­itabil­i­ty across all chan­nels,” Mout­tet stat­ed.