The ac­qui­si­tion of the T&T dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny AS Bry­dens & Sons Hold­ings by Ja­maica’s pub­licly held dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, Se­prod, in June 2022, has led to a dra­mat­ic im­prove­ment in the fi­nan­cial per­for­mance of the north Caribbean firm.

Analy­sis of the Se­prod Group’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the six-month pe­ri­od from Oc­to­ber 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023, in­di­cates the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue more than dou­bled to J$55.29 bil­lion from J$24.53 bil­lion, com­pared with same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er.

And the Ja­maican com­pa­ny’s af­ter-tax prof­it al­most tre­bled, in­creas­ing to J$2.56 bil­lion for the six months from Oc­to­ber 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023 com­pared with J$886.77 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er. (TT$1 to about J$23).

Speak­ing at the AS Bry­den booth at the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence on Thurs­day, Richard Pan­do­hie, the CEO of Bry­dens and its par­ent, Se­prod, said be­tween 40 and 45 per cent of the Ja­maican com­pa­ny’s rev­enue and be­fore-tax prof­its come from AS Bry­den.

Pan­do­hie said: “We came in with our eyes wide open. We are very for­tu­nate that the ac­qui­si­tion oc­curred dur­ing COVID and pret­ty much af­ter that Trinidad opened up. So you had Car­ni­val, you had con­sump­tion go­ing again, which is very im­por­tant for the Bry­den’s group as a lot of the prod­ucts are very con­sump­tion dri­ven. So that has giv­en us a re­al­ly great start.

“Over­all, in terms of peo­ple, we could not have asked for bet­ter tal­ent. We are now start­ing to ask peo­ple to move from Trinidad to Ja­maica to help us get up to stan­dard there. That has al­so giv­en us a bet­ter ar­gu­ment when we are talk­ing to ex­ter­nal prin­ci­pals...we are not talk­ing about Trinidad or Ja­maica. We are talk­ing about how can we rep­re­sent the re­gion and that is very im­por­tant to us and Bry­den has giv­en us that space.”

Asked about the out­come of the of­fer of shares in AS Bry­den to the em­ploy­ees of the lo­cal com­pa­ny in the fourth quar­ter of 2022, Pan­do­hie said it was “amaz­ing.”

He said 54 per cent of the em­ploy­ees took up the op­tion to ac­quire shares in the com­pa­ny, re­flect­ing a “huge vote of con­fi­dence” in the man­age­ment as well as in the di­rec­tion of the com­pa­ny.

He not­ed that the em­ploy­ees are “no longer em­ploy­ees but they are em­ploy­ee/own­ers.”

‘They want to know about their div­i­dends and they have re­ceived div­i­dends twice since. They al­so want to know when we are go­ing to list. We had said we were go­ing to list by the end of the year. We can’t list un­til we are au­dit­ed,” he added.

In March and June 2023, Se­prod an­nounced de­lays in re­leas­ing its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for 2022, cit­ing is­sues with re­ceiv­ing re­ports from cer­tain in­de­pen­dent val­u­a­tion ex­perts.

Asked about this, Pan­do­hie said the au­dit is ex­pect­ed to be closed this month.

In shar­ing fur­ther de­tails, he ex­plained, “If you re­call Bry­dens year end was in March or April. We changed the year end to the cal­en­der year to align with Se­prod. We did that pret­ty much in Sep­tem­ber. We changed au­di­tors. A num­ber of things hap­pened so that cre­at­ed a lot of the de­lays.

“It is un­for­tu­nate. We are not hap­py about it. It is al­so de­lay­ing Se­prod’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials but at the end of this month we ex­pect to be re­leas­ing the fi­nan­cials au­dit­ed,” Pan­do­hie as­sured.

He added in the worse case the fi­nan­cials would be re­leased by Au­gust/Sep­tem­ber.

“We have to come out with a full au­dit. I have an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in Ja­maica in Sep­tem­ber any­way,” he said.

Se­prod’s ac­qui­si­tion of AS Bry­den ex­tend­ed the Ja­maican com­pa­ny’s foot­print in Guyana and T&T.

Be­ing a re­gion­al play­er al­so means plan­ning for the long-term, Pan­do­hie said, not­ing that that con­cept is not al­ways im­ple­ment­ed in Caribbean coun­tries.

“In the Caribbean, we have been very short term. We’re think­ing one year or two years. I think when you’re cre­at­ing lega­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty your vi­sion has to be much more long-term and for us the vi­sion is what we want the Caribbean to be. We want the Caribbean to be a lot more than peo­ple see­ing us as just a tran­si­to­ry place for sun, sea what­ev­er.

“We be­lieve we can have a strong pro­duc­tive base where our peo­ple can as­pire to more than just mi­grants for oth­er peo­ple and where we can de­vel­op our own wealth and our own agen­das and that’s the vi­sion we have,” Pan­do­hie ex­plained.

He fur­ther ad­vised that politi­cians and busi­ness lead­ers must there­fore, see be­yond the “next elec­tion or the next quar­ter­ly re­sults.”

Pan­do­hie al­so wel­comed this month’s de­ci­sion by Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment to al­low free move­ment for all Cari­com na­tion­als as a vi­tal step for­ward for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and val­ue-added syn­er­gies in busi­ness.

He al­so not­ed: “The Bry­dens Group is an ex­am­ple of the dy­namism of the re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor, con­stant­ly alert to op­por­tu­ni­ties across the re­gion and merg­ing in­ter­ests to im­prove busi­ness.”

The Bry­dens Group, most­ly known as a dis­trib­u­tor of im­port­ed goods, dis­played its ex­port po­ten­tial prod­ucts at the TIC.

The Group has de­vel­oped a range of pri­vate-la­bel owned brands to meet the grow­ing needs of lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, and is tap­ping in­to the food, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, house­hold and home care seg­ments.

AS Bry­den will com­mem­o­rate its 100th year in busi­ness in T&T in Oc­to­ber.

“The jour­ney of 100 has been amaz­ing with equal­ly amaz­ing peo­ple in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. In terms of Bry­den’s as a part of the Trinidad fab­ric, I have been with­in part of the Trinidad land­scape per­son­al­ly for a long time.

“...I have al­ways known about Bry­dens, so when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came up for an ac­qui­si­tion in June last year it was such a no-brain­er be­cause not very of­ten you get a com­pa­ny that is such an in­te­gral part of so­ci­ety and it fit­ted our agen­da about ex­pand­ing re­gion­al­ly. You can’t re­al­ly be a re­gion­al play­er if you’re not strong in Trinidad and strong in Ja­maica,” Pan­do­hie said.

Pan­do­hie’s con­nec­tion to T&T goes back decades. He spent three years on the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, grad­u­at­ing with a BSc in chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing in 1989. He al­so read for an MBA in op­er­a­tions man­age­ment and fi­nance at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al.