Unilever Caribbean Ltd record­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $6 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed March 31, 2024, rep­re­sent­ing a 147.2 per cent in­crease com­pared to the same quar­ter in 2023.

Al­though the fast mov­ing con­sumer goods dis­trib­u­tor ex­pe­ri­enced a sharp in­crease in its prof­its for its first quar­ter, its rev­enue of $57 mil­lion re­flect­ed an 18.6 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $70 mil­lion it gen­er­at­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

In its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments pub­lished on the T&T Stock Ex­change, Unilever Caribbean’s chair Daniela Bu­caro said the high­er rev­enue for the first quar­ter of 2023 was main­ly re­lat­ed to close-out pro­mo­tions of COVID 19-re­lat­ed prod­ucts, which in­creased rev­enue.  

Bu­caro said the com­pa­ny has main­tained its em­pha­sis on dri­ving prof­itable growth for long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.  

This strate­gic fo­cus she men­tioned re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant growth in the beau­ty and per­son­al care cat­e­go­ry, which now ac­counts for 49.3 per cent of to­tal rev­enue, up from 45.2 per cent in the pre­vi­ous year.  

Al­so, Bu­caro not­ed that home care ac­count­ed for 39.3 per cent of rev­enue, with food & re­fresh­ments mak­ing up 11.4 per cent. This shift, as well as a re­duc­tion in freight costs boost­ed over­all mar­gins dur­ing the first quar­ter, she out­lined. 

The chair­man high­light­ed that cost man­age­ment strate­gies and cash flow op­ti­mi­sa­tion ini­tia­tives have been im­ple­ment­ed, re­sult­ing in a 21.9 per cent de­crease in sell­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion costs as well an ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es, and a 21.5 per cent re­duc­tion in in­ven­to­ries.  

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said the cash bal­ance in­creased by $9.4m, to a bal­ance of $167.3 mil­lion.  

“This ap­proach has re­sult­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in op­er­at­ing prof­it of $9.4m, re­flect­ing a 221 per cent in­crease com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. The earn­ings per share for the first quar­ter were $0.23, rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease from $0.09 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in 2023,” said Bu­caro.  

She said the com­pa­ny main­tains a ro­bust bal­ance sheet with healthy cash re­serves and re­mains com­mit­ted to dri­ving sus­tain­able and prof­itable growth through its brands.