Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co) has record­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $105 mil­lion for the three months end­ed 31 March, 2020. This rep­re­sents a $4.9 mil­lion or 4.9 per cent in­crease over the same pe­ri­od in 2019.

WI­it­co’s Prof­it be­fore Tax­a­tion of $150.9 mil­lion al­so rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of $5.8 mil­lion or 3.97 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2019.

In the re­lease of the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial state­ments, Wit­co chair­man An­tho­ny E Phillip said the im­pact of COVID-19 on the busi­ness would not be brief.

Phillip ex­plained: “The Com­pa­ny re­mains cog­nisant of the fact that this un­prece­dent­ed pe­ri­od would have last­ing ef­fects on our op­er­a­tions and dis­tri­b­u­tion. How­ev­er, we re­main con­fi­dent in our re­silience to weath­er this storm.”

As a re­sult of the glob­al pan­dem­ic, Phillip said Wit­co im­ple­ment­ed and con­tin­ued to en­gage sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to safe­guard the health and safe­ty of its em­ploy­ees and key stake­hold­ers.

Fur­ther to the ad­vent of the “stay at home” pe­ri­od, the chair­man al­so high­light­ed that the Com­pa­ny has been in com­plete com­pli­ance with all reg­u­la­tions and ful­ly sup­ports the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T to man­age and re­duce the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the “stay-at-home” pe­ri­od, Wit­co not­ed that its man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions had ceased. This has re­sult­ed in the com­pa­ny’s in­abil­i­ty to sup­ply prod­ucts to British Amer­i­can To­bac­co (it’s par­ent com­pa­ny), Con­tract Mar­kets and the de­ple­tion of lo­cal and Cari­com stock lev­els.

Con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent un­cer­tain­ty of the full im­pact of COVID-19 on Wit­co’s busi­ness, its Board took a de­ci­sion not to pay a 1st in­ter­im div­i­dend for the three months end­ed March 31.

Wit­co, along­side Nu Iron and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL), has been al­lowed to re­sume op­er­a­tions for the first phase of open­ing the econ­o­my. Wit­co al­so re­cent­ly in­stalled a new man­ag­ing mirec­tor, Lau­rent Mef­fre.

The com­pa­ny has had chal­lenges in the past with il­lic­it trade pen­e­trat­ing the mar­ket, and there­by in­creas­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Nev­er­the­less the com­pa­ny emerged with suc­ces­sive pe­ri­ods of prof­its.

As at March, 31 2020, the com­pa­ny’s as­sets stood at $784mil­lion.