Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed has record­ed a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in rev­enue for fi­nan­cial year 2021.

In the com­pa­ny’s An­nu­al Re­port for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021, TCL Group Chair­man David G In­gle­field said the Group con­tin­ued to re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to chal­lenges aris­ing from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and a high­ly volatile eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment. De­spite these hur­dles, the year end­ed with an im­proved re­sult of $190 mil­lion in net in­come, a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in com­par­i­son to $15 mil­lion in 2020.

He said; “These pos­i­tive re­sults were gen­er­at­ed from an­nu­al rev­enue of $1.9 bil­lion, a 12 per cent in­crease over 2020, pri­mar­i­ly due to the strong pent-up de­mand for ce­ment in the Group’s pri­ma­ry mar­kets, as well as the con­tin­u­a­tion of strict cost con­trol which mit­i­gat­ed the sig­nif­i­cant in­fla­tion ex­pe­ri­enced, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the sec­ond half of the year.”

The re­port stat­ed an­nu­al earn­ings be­fore tax­a­tion were $244 mil­lion, a sub­stan­tial in­crease of more than 160 per cent com­pared to 2020.

In­gle­field said: “This per­for­mance is re­lat­ed to the im­proved op­er­a­tional per­for­mance de­scribed above, in ad­di­tion to a re­duc­tion in our fi­nance ex­pens­es that re­sult­ed from a re­pay­ment of loan bal­ances dur­ing the year. More­over, the Group record­ed an earned net oth­er in­come of $22 mil­lion from the re­ver­sal of im­pair­ment loss­es and past ser­vice cred­its of pen­sion and em­ploy­ee ben­e­fits, which rep­re­sent­ed a net ex­pense of $74 mil­lion in 2020.”

He con­tin­ued: “In 2021, the TCL Group gen­er­at­ed $300 mil­lion in cash from in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy in op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that re­sult­ed from im­proved op­er­at­ing prof­its. Con­sis­tent with the Group’s ini­tia­tive to re­duce debt, TT$163 mil­lion of long-term debt was re­paid dur­ing the year un­der re­view. TT-dol­lar debt fa­cil­i­ties ex­pir­ing dur­ing 2021 were re­fi­nanced and ex­tend­ed to 2023 and US-dol­lar de­nom­i­nat­ed debt fa­cil­i­ties ex­pir­ing in 2021 were al­so rene­go­ti­at­ed and ex­tend­ed to 2024.”

He ex­plained that all debt fa­cil­i­ties held by Caribbean Ce­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed were re­paid dur­ing 2021.

In­gle­field end­ed: “This fi­nan­cial per­for­mance is a tes­ta­ment of the TCL Group’s com­mit­ment to man­age these dif­fi­cult times, al­ways look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate share­hold­er val­ue.”