Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

One year since the an­nounce­ment, the shares of the West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (WIT­CO) has now re­ceived the reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval to be split in­to three.

In a fil­ing on the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC), WIT­CO not­ed: “The amend­ment au­tho­rised a share split to con­vert each or­di­nary share of the com­pa­ny in­to three or­di­nary shares sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval. Reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval has now been re­ceived.”

This means that share­hold­ers’ cur­rent stock hold­ings will ap­pre­ci­ate in val­ue while WIT­CO’s stock will be more af­ford­able for the av­er­age per­son to pur­chase.

The share split will be ef­fect­ed on No­vem­ber 28, 2019 (the Record Date) “where each of the com­pa­ny’s is­sued or­di­nary shares held by the share­hold­ers on the Record Date will be con­vert­ed in­to three is­sued or­di­nary shares of the Com­pa­ny.”

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the share split the com­pa­ny’s is­sued cap­i­tal will be in­creased from 84,240,000 is­sued or­di­nary shares to 252,720,000 is­sued or­di­nary shares.

The stock split, which was ap­proved and an­nounced at spe­cial Share­hold­ers’ Meet­ing held on Oc­to­ber 30, 2018, took 6 months longer than was pre­dict­ed by com­pa­ny Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jean-Pierre du Coudray at the com­pa­ny’s last AGM. At WIT­CO’s AGM in April 2019, du Coudray said that the ap­proval process for the com­pa­ny’s share split was tak­ing a lit­tle longer than ex­pect­ed.

He said that the de­lay was re­lat­ed to the lengthy process of get­ting in­for­ma­tion from the in­vestors abroad, but he ex­pect­ed the ap­proval to come through in May.

The com­pa­ny has al­so been en­gaged in a bat­tle with il­lic­it­ly trad­ed cig­a­rettes that af­fect­ed WIT­CO’s bot­tom line .

In a past in­ter­view du Coudray said: “I’ll be hon­est with you. I think 2017 was the scari­est year for us be­cause we saw a lot of peo­ple leave us to go to these cheap­er brands.”

He con­tin­ued: “But when they re­alised what they’re smok­ing, they came back, and they have been com­ing back. That’s why our re­sults for 2018 and 2019 con­tin­ue to grow be­cause we are get­ting a lot of our con­sumers back.”

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny has record­ed a net prof­it of $210 mil­lion for the six month pe­ri­od end­ed June 30, 2019.

WIT­CO Chair­man, An­tho­ny Phillip said in a state­ment: “I am pleased to re­port that West In­di­an To­bac­co has record­ed Prof­it Be­fore Tax­a­tion of $300.9 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 16.5 mil­lion or 8.5% over com­par­a­tive 2018.”

Phillip not­ed that the con­tribut­ing fac­tors for the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance in­clude “in­no­va­tion to main­tain the rel­e­vance of our brands, con­stant re­view of cost-sav­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and ef­fi­cien­cies in our man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions.”