Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd has record­ed a prof­it of $35.5 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year of 2019. This is a 36% in­crease from $26.4 mil­lion in 2018.

In a re­lease, Pres­tige Hold­ings Chair­man Chris­t­ian Mout­tet said: “Our im­proved prof­itabil­i­ty in 2019 was due to in­creased sales, pri­mar­i­ly from new restau­rants, and im­proved op­er­a­tions in most of our brands.”

He con­tin­ued: “While all brands ex­pe­ri­enced im­proved sales, our Sub­way, Star­bucks and TGI Fri­day’s brands en­joyed the most sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in prof­itabil­i­ty when com­pared to the pri­or year.”

Dur­ing the year, Pres­tige not­ed that it com­plet­ed a new de­vel­op­ment—Trinci­ty Plaza in Trinci­ty. Mout­tet ac­knowl­edged that the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny’s new restau­rants at this lo­ca­tion has ex­ceed­ed its ex­pec­ta­tions.

Mout­tet said that Pres­tige’s key ar­eas of fo­cus for 2019 was im­proved cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and greater op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cies across all brands.

He ex­plained: “In­de­pen­dent mar­ket re­search mon­i­tored by our­selves and our in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chisors dur­ing the pe­ri­od in­di­cate that we have im­proved in many ar­eas.”

The oth­er area of im­prove­ment in 2019, ac­cord­ing to Mout­tet, was the suc­cess­ful in­tro­duc­tion of new prod­ucts in some brands and the in­tro­duc­tion of val­ue of­fer­ing that res­onat­ed with cus­tomers.

The com­pa­ny chair­man not­ed that Pres­tige’s long term bor­row­ings in­creased from $63 mil­lion to $77 mil­lion due to the fi­nanc­ing of Trinci­ty Plaza, which cur­rent­ly hous­es three of the com­pa­ny’s brands. Mout­tet ex­pressed: “Dur­ing the pe­ri­od, we opened 7sev­en new restau­rants—two Star­bucks at Trinci­ty and Cou­va, two Piz­za Huts at Trinci­ty and two KFCs at Movie Towne, Port-of-Spain and Tumpuna Road.”

He con­tin­ued: “Dur­ing the year we al­so closed two Sub­way restau­rants in Port-of-Spain, at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall and Hart Street, re­lo­cat­ed the Sub­way in Val­sayn and reimag­ined five KFCs at Mor­vant, Gulf View, Tu­na­puna, West­moor­ings and Mara­bel­la. We end­ed the year with a to­tal of 129 restau­rants.”

In 2020, Mout­tet ac­knowl­edged that Pres­tige will con­tin­ue to face some of the chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced in the pre­vi­ous year, the most sig­nif­i­cant be­ing the abil­i­ty to ac­cess suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change to pay for­eign sup­pli­ers on a time­ly ba­sis.

Ac­cord­ing to Mout­tet: “This sit­u­a­tion not on­ly has as sig­nif­i­cant cost im­pact on our com­pa­ny, but al­so is a threat to our sup­ply chain.” Mout­tet in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny is seek­ing in­no­v­a­tive ways to re­duce its re­liance on im­ports by work­ing with lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and pro­duc­ers to im­prove lo­cal sourc­ing.

He not­ed that Pres­tige has al­ready achieved some suc­cess in that area, with two sig­nif­i­cant prod­ucts that were pre­vi­ous­ly im­port­ed, now be­ing sourced lo­cal­ly.

In the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, Pres­tige will be­gin con­struc­tion of a new Op­er­a­tions and Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cen­tre in Aranguez. Mout­tet said: “This will be a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment for our com­pa­ny and will, for the first time, bring to­geth­er all of our of­fices and ware­hous­ing, cur­rent­ly in three lo­ca­tions, in­to one in­te­grat­ed fa­cil­i­ty.”

He con­tin­ued: “We ex­pect that this will im­prove man­age­ment ef­fec­tive­ness and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies from in­cep­tion. This fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to be oc­cu­pied in the first half of 2022.”