The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion has man­aged sig­nif­i­cant growth in 2021 in spite of chal­lenges posed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

At UTC’s An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing which was held vir­tu­al­ly, UTC di­rec­tor Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho high­light­ed the com­pa­ny’s sig­nif­i­cant as­set growth in his ad­dress.

He said, “In 2021, we achieved an­oth­er his­toric mile­stone, with to­tal As­sets Un­der Man­age­ment grow­ing by 7%, stand­ing at TT$25.5B, up from TT$23.8B the year be­fore. At the end of fis­cal 2021, we record­ed pos­i­tive re­turns on all nine of our Funds and re­alised a to­tal in­come of TT$1.4B.”

Ca­ma­cho not­ed the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance helped pro­vide much need­ed div­i­dend dis­tri­b­u­tion pay­ments to Unithold­ers giv­en the dif­fi­cult time the coun­try had un­der­gone from an eco­nom­ic stand­point.

He said, “We have once again up­held this Dis­tri­b­u­tion Phi­los­o­phy, pay­ing out div­i­dend dis­tri­b­u­tions of TT$221M in 2021.”

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Nigel Ed­wards al­so hailed the growth of As­set un­der man­age­ment but not­ed the com­pa­nies over­all fis­cal per­for­mance trend­ed up­ward.

Ed­wards said, “In 2021, we have main­tained and ex­ceed­ed the good re­sults which we were able to re­port in 2020. This was large­ly due to as­tute in­vest­ment man­age­ment and the sta­ble, re­silient ap­proach for which the Cor­po­ra­tion is known.”

Ed­wards not­ed Dis­tri­b­u­tions for the Growth and In­come Fund in­creased by 47.80% or TT$10.8M, from TT$22.7M in 2020 to TT$33.6M in 2021, while to­tal In­come for 2021 stood at TT$1.4B, which rep­re­sent­ed 82% in­crease when com­pared to 2020. He said this was large­ly dri­ven by im­prove­ments in the fair mar­ket val­ues of our in­vest­ments. Net In­come al­so record­ed an in­crease of 25%, from TT$57.9M in 2020 to TT$72.2M.

He added that based on in­di­ca­tions, 2022 al­so promised to be a suc­cess­ful year.

“These re­sults speak for them­selves, and we are on track to con­tin­ue to de­liv­er sol­id per­for­mance. This is ev­i­denced by the 2022 first quar­ter fig­ures of dis­tri­b­u­tions to unithold­ers which to­talled TT$46M, net in­come of TT$29.7M, and growth in re­tained earn­ings to TT$1.62B.”

Ed­wards was al­so proud of the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to main­tain high cred­it rat­ings dur­ing the dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

He said, “For the third con­sec­u­tive year, Cari­CRIS award­ed the UTC a Cari­AA rat­ing on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale and ttAA on the Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al scale. This recog­ni­tion serves to af­firm our dili­gent ef­forts to main­tain ex­cel­lent cred­it­wor­thi­ness, strong cash bal­ances and a ro­bust risk man­age­ment frame­work.”

He al­so in­formed the AGM that UTC had formed a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Ja­maican com­pa­ny GraceKennedy.

“To this end, we con­tin­ued the de­vel­op­ment of our part­ner­ship in Ja­maica via a strate­gic al­liance with GraceKennedy, with whom we have signed a Joint Ven­ture Agree­ment. We are al­so in the process of se­cur­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals for a sep­a­rate ini­tia­tive in the Caribbean. In both ter­ri­to­ries, our ex­pec­ta­tion is that we will ful­ly meet the reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments and be­gin the es­tab­lish­ment of our foot­print be­fore the end of 2022.”

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