The af­ter-tax prof­it of Neal & Massy Hold­ings in­creased by a lit­tle over 1 per cent in the Oc­to­ber 1 to De­cem­ber 31 quar­ter, com­pared with the same pe­ri­od in its pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year, ac­cord­ing to the group's first quar­ter unau­dit­ed re­sults. Neal & Massy said that the fact that a sig­nif­i­cant share of the im­prove­ment in the com­pa­ny came from com­pa­nies with strong mi­nor­i­ty in­ter­ests re­sult­ed in a de­cline in prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers from $115.3 mil­lion to $110.6 mil­lion. While its prof­it re­mains flat, the group said that it ex­pe­ri­enced rev­enue growth in all ter­ri­to­ries and across all busi­ness units.

"Our rev­enue from con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions in­creased 7 per cent to $2.28 bil­lion and op­er­at­ing prof­its in­creased 2 per cent to $164 mil­lion in the first quar­ter of the 2011 fi­nan­cial year," ac­cord­ing to the chair­man's state­ment ac­com­pa­ny­ing the group's quar­ter­ly ac­counts. "Par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ing was the per­for­mance of our Guyana, Ja­maica and Trinidad op­er­a­tions which all showed dou­ble dig­it growth in prof­it be­fore tax," ac­cord­ing to the group. It said that its re­sults in Bar­ba­dos were neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by Unit­ed In­sur­ance cliams for dam­age suf­fered by clients from Trop­i­cal Storm Tomas. Had it not been for the in­sur­ance cliams, Neal & Massy's prof­it be­fore tax would have grown by 9 per cent.

Ac­cord­ing to the group, its dis­con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions de­clared a loss of 3 cents in earn­ings per share, com­pared with 10 cents loss in the same pe­ri­od a year ago. Neal & Massy said that loss­es from its dis­con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions at War­rens in Bar­ba­dos are ex­pect­ed to end when the op­er­a­tions are closed, which the group has tar­get­ted to hap­pen this month. "The group is con­tin­u­ing its ef­forts to re­duce or elim­i­nate loss­es from the oth­er com­pa­nies fac­ing prof­itabil­i­ty chal­lenges in the port­fo­lio," said the com­pa­ny's chair­man Arthur Lok Jack.

GraceKennedy prof­its de­cline 12.6 per cent

GraceKennedy, the Ja­maican con­glom­er­ate, ex­pe­ri­enced a de­cline in its rev­enues of 3.6 per cent and in its net prof­it at­trib­ut­able to the own­ers of the com­pa­ny by 12.6 per cent for the 12 months end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2010. The group in­tro­duced a new div­i­dend pol­i­cy last year which sees share­hold­ers get a high­er per­cent­age of re­turns from the com­pa­ny. The in­for­ma­tion came in the chair­man's re­port by Dou­glas Orane.

Agos­ti­ni's sales, prof­its up

Agos­ti­ni's prof­it at­trib­ut­able to sharesh­old­ers in­creased to $24.3 mil­lion in the 12 months end­ing Sep­tem­ber 31, 2010 from $705,000 in the pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er, ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny's au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­port. The group's rev­enue in­creased to $857 mil­lion in 2010 from $720 mil­lion in 2009, ac­cord­ing to the chair­man's state­ment by Joe Esau.