ANSA McAL Group CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III said yes­ter­day that the con­glom­er­ate "re­mains very ac­quis­i­tive" and has a bal­ance sheet that is "ex­cep­tion­al­ly strong" and ca­pa­ble of tak­ing on "sig­nif­i­cant­ly more."

Ad­dress­ing share­hold­ers at the group's an­nu­al meet­ing, which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, Sab­ga said the group is grow­ing and prof­itable and is mak­ing cap­i­tal in­vest­ments and ac­qui­si­tions to en­sure that its up­ward tra­jec­to­ry re­mains.

"As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, as you know, we re­main very ac­quis­i­tive in or­der to con­tin­ue to se­cure and dri­ve that val­ue cre­ation."

He said the group spent $437 mil­lion on ac­qui­si­tions in 2023.

Along­side its dri­ve to grow through ac­qui­si­tions, he un­der­scored the fact that the group con­tin­ues to rein­vest its prof­its for fu­ture growth, out­lin­ing that ANSA McAL made cap­i­tal in­vest­ments to­tal­ing $736 mil­lion in 2023.

In re­view­ing the group's fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, the ANSA McAL CEO said its achieve­ment of $7 bil­lion in rev­enue in 2023 made that a "wa­ter­mark year."

The stronger rev­enue cor­re­spond­ed "with a sub­stan­tial in­crease in prof­it be­fore tax to $842 mil­lion," lead­ing Sab­ga to say, "What this all cor­re­lates to, and what is prob­a­bly the most in­ter­est­ing as­pect of all of this, is that we have a bal­ance sheet that re­mains ex­cep­tion­al­ly strong and ro­bust and that is able to take on sig­nif­i­cant­ly more.

"Our gear­ing ra­tio is su­per healthy at 7.4 per cent. So a very low lever­age and a bal­ance sheet that is very ca­pa­ble of do­ing quite a few good things. Notwith­stand­ing, but al­so in sup­port of all of these in­vest­ments, there is still suf­fi­cient and sub­stan­tial cash and cap­i­tal to do the need­ful as we con­tin­ue to ex­pand to­wards our X2 ob­jec­tive."

A com­pa­ny's gear­ing ra­tio is a com­par­i­son of its cap­i­tal to the funds bor­rowed by it.

On its X2 ob­jec­tive, Sab­ga said, "The group has tak­en on a com­mitt­ment to dou­ble its size, scale, prof­itabil­i­ty and im­pact in an en­deav­our that we af­fec­tion­ate­ly call X2. We re­main stead­fast­ly fo­cused on achiev­ing that re­sult. The path to get there is still in front of us and we still have some work to go. But we re­main very, very en­cour­aged about the achieve­ment of that."