The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (WIT­CO) has record­ed re­duced prof­its com­pared to its last per­for­mance for the same pe­ri­od last year.

In the com­pa­ny's unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­port for the nine-month per­lod end­ed 30 Sep­tem­ber 2023, the com­pa­ny record­ed proft be­fore tax of $213.1 mil­lion, which rep­re­sents a de­crease of $91.8 mil­lion or 30 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

The cig­a­rette-pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny's af­ter-tax prof­it for the nine-month pe­ri­od was $47.28 mil­lion, which rep­re­sent­ed a de­cline of 15.9 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

How­ev­er WIT­CO chair In­grid Lash­ley stat­ed in the re­port that the com­pa­ny was build­ing on the half-year per­for­mance in fur­ther nar­row­ing the gap of 63 per cent of the first fi­nan­cial quar­ter end­ed March 312023.

She added, "The com­pa­ny's trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, which be­gan in the first quar­ter of the 2022 fi­nan­cial year, con­tin­ues, with the con­sol­i­da­tion of our dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 2023. This tran­si­tion, crit­i­cal for the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our busi­ness, promis­es many ben­e­fits in im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy, bet­ter cus­tomer con­tact and an ex­ten­sive of­fer­ing."

She ex­plained, "In the im­me­di­ate pe­ri­od, in­ven­to­ry move­ments, mar­ket ad­just­ments and con­sumer re-po­si­tion­ing re­sult­ed in rev­enue de­cline by $3.1 mil­lion or 1.9% com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter last year "

Lash­ley said how­ev­er there were pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tors head­ing in­to the next fis­cal year, as Lash­ley stat­ed, "In­no­va­tion con­tin­ues to be a key to our fu­ture growth, and we are well-po­si­tioned to con­tin­ue to lead the mar­ket via new prod­ucts. We see this as a ve­hi­cle for chang­ing the ex­ist­ing land­scape while en­sur­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our em­ploy­ees, the com­pa­ny's busi­ness, and the coun­try's so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­prove­ment."