Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) says it has record­ed its strongest fi­nan­cial per­for­mance in 17 years, post­ing a prof­it af­ter tax of TT$214 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 31, 2026, but the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is urg­ing the com­pa­ny to trans­late that suc­cess in­to long-de­layed wage set­tle­ments for em­ploy­ees.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, TSTT and its sub­sidiary, Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd, said prof­it af­ter tax in­creased by 103 per cent over the pre­vi­ous year, while rev­enue grew 9.2 per cent to TT$2.17 bil­lion, the strongest top-line growth in more than a decade.

The com­pa­ny al­so re­port­ed earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est, tax­es, de­pre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­sa­tion (EBIT­DA) of TT$910 mil­lion, up TT$135 mil­lion or 17 per cent, with mar­gins of about 42 per cent.

Chair­man Kern Dass at­trib­uted the re­sults to dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion and the com­pa­ny’s long-term trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy.

“These ex­cep­tion­al re­sults re­flect not just a fi­nan­cial mile­stone, but the re­lent­less ded­i­ca­tion and dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion across every lev­el of TSTT,” he said, adding that the com­pa­ny re­mained com­mit­ted to be­com­ing “a stronger, more ag­ile, and fu­ture-ready dig­i­tal pow­er­house for T&T.”

Ac­cord­ing to TSTT, the per­for­mance was dri­ven by tighter cost con­trols, im­prove­ments in net­work re­li­a­bil­i­ty and cus­tomer ser­vice, stronger com­mer­cial ex­e­cu­tion and con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in its tran­si­tion from a tra­di­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider to a tech­nol­o­gy-led busi­ness.

The com­pa­ny al­so an­nounced it had re­turned to pos­i­tive re­tained earn­ings of TT$35 mil­lion, mark­ing the first time in sev­er­al years that ac­cu­mu­lat­ed loss­es had been ful­ly re­cov­ered.

Act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Keino Cox thanked em­ploy­ees for their con­tri­bu­tion to the turn­around.

“These re­sults be­long to every em­ploy­ee of the Group,” Cox said. “Their com­mit­ment to serv­ing our cus­tomers, im­prov­ing our net­work, em­brac­ing change and ex­e­cut­ing our strat­e­gy has made this per­for­mance pos­si­ble.”

How­ev­er, the CWU said the fi­nan­cial re­sults strength­ened its case for con­clud­ing out­stand­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

While con­grat­u­lat­ing the com­pa­ny on its per­for­mance, the union said em­ploy­ees de­served equal recog­ni­tion for the turn­around.

“The Union can re­spect­ful­ly sub­mit, if ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship de­serves recog­ni­tion, then the work­force equal­ly de­serves recog­ni­tion,” the state­ment said. “Cor­po­rate suc­cess is col­lec­tive.”

The union ar­gued that with ac­cu­mu­lat­ed loss­es erased and prof­itabil­i­ty re­stored, one of the tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers to wage set­tle­ments had been re­moved.

“If his­tor­i­cal loss­es have now been erased, then one of the tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers to wage set­tle­ments has ef­fec­tive­ly dis­ap­peared,” the CWU said, adding that work­ers should now ex­pect to share in the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess.

The union al­so raised a se­ries of ques­tions about the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, in­clud­ing whether the TT$214 mil­lion prof­it is sus­tain­able, how much re­sult­ed from re­cur­ring op­er­a­tions rather than one-off ad­just­ments, whether re­duced labour costs con­tributed to the re­sults and what im­pact any sur­plus in the TEL­CO pen­sion plan may have had on prof­its.

It al­so ques­tioned whether ex­ec­u­tive re­mu­ner­a­tion had in­creased.

The CWU called for wage ne­go­ti­a­tions cov­er­ing the 2020-2022 and 2023-2025 pe­ri­ods to be con­clud­ed with­out fur­ther de­lay, say­ing the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­cov­ery made con­tin­ued post­pone­ment in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy.