PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The ANSA McAL Group has seen in­creased growth in the US and Guyanese mar­kets in the 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

At the re­lease of ANSA McAL’s 2025 year-end fi­nan­cial re­sults at Samaan Es­tate on yes­ter­day, ANSA McAL chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Nicholas Jack­man con­firmed the group’s prof­its were back to the bil­lions for the fi­nan­cial year.

“Man­age­ment is proud to share that rev­enue in­creased to $7.8 bil­lion or 9.0 per cent year on year, demon­strat­ing re­silient de­mand and cost of the dis­ci­plined port­fo­lio.

“Our ad­just­ed EBIT­DA took 21 per cent, $1.76 bil­lion re­flect­ing strong op­er­at­ing lever­age,” said Jack­man, “As far as prof­itabil­i­ty, ANSA is back in the bil­lions as prof­it be­fore tax rose 10 per cent to $1.014 bil­lion re­in­forc­ing that the top line growth is trans­lat­ing in­to bot­tom line per­for­mance.”

Jack­man not­ed that US and Guyana now claimed a larg­er share of the group’s rev­enue gen­er­a­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“Two years ago, T&T ac­count­ed for 73 per cent (of our rev­enues). T&T now in 2025 just two years lat­er, con­tributes 66 per cent. Two years ago, Unit­ed States con­tributed 1.0 per cent of the rev­enue. To­day, in 2025, Unit­ed States is al­ready up to 7.0 per cent. Two years ago, Guyana was at 7.0 per cent in terms of con­tri­bu­tion to over­all rev­enue. Guyana is now our sec­ond largest ju­ris­dic­tion con­tribut­ing just over 12 per cent of rev­enue,” said Jack­man.

De­spite pulling out of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) last month, Group CEO of ANSA McAL An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said the com­pa­ny has no plan to form an al­ter­na­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion to rep­re­sent the man­u­fac­tur­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

ANSA McAL with­drew from TTMA in late Jan­u­ary af­ter news broke of in­creased nat­ur­al gas prices be­ing im­ple­ment­ed for the man­u­fac­tur­ers. Sab­ga said de­spite the im­passe with the TTMA, the group would con­tin­ue to sup­port var­i­ous es­tab­lished busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions in the coun­try.

“There are no plans for us to form a new or­gan­i­sa­tion. Quite frankly, we con­tin­ue to re­main as very ac­tive par­tic­i­pants and as sub­stan­tial man­u­fac­tur­ers with­in T&T and I would ven­ture to say, quite humbly, that I don’t be­lieve there’s any oth­er en­ti­ty that op­er­ates the length and breadth and ca­pa­bil­i­ty and vari­a­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts in this mar­ket like ANSA McAL,” he said

The ANSA McAL CEO said the chal­lenge with the TTMA was some­thing that reached a bit of an im­passe for us. That be­ing said, we con­tin­ue to sup­port all of var­i­ous BDOs and busi­ness cham­bers and busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions in this coun­try, what it is they need to do. And the new ones and the old ones.”

The ANSA McAL CEO said gov­ern­ment poli­cies were noth­ing new and the nat­ur­al gas price ad­just­ment was mere­ly an­oth­er rea­son for the com­pa­ny to strive for in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy.

He al­so con­firmed that de­spite a 100 per cent in­crease in ex­cise du­ty for al­co­hol in last year’s bud­get, which led to in­creased beer prices, Carib sales were do­ing well.

“I would say yes. It has im­pact­ed us quite pos­i­tive­ly. And whilst I do not want to, and can­not, give specifics around our cur­rent per­for­mance, I don’t want to give any for­ward state­ment. We are hav­ing a very healthy, as you have seen a very healthy fourth quar­ter. And based on all in­di­ca­tions, a very strong, very ro­bust and very healthy first quar­ter,” said Sab­ga.

In his state­ment ac­com­pa­ny­ing the fi­nan­cials, ANSA McAL chair­man, Nor­man Sab­ga, said the group’s re­sults demon­strate a high­er lev­el of earn­ings ca­pac­i­ty and over­all cash avail­abil­i­ty, which the com­pa­ny di­rect­ed to strength­en­ing its bal­ance sheet.

“Dur­ing the year, we re­paid $502 mil­lion in to­tal debt ser­vice and re­duced gear­ing to 23.9 per cent (2024: 28.4 per cent) while re­main­ing with­in all debt covenant thresh­olds with ap­pro­pri­ate head­room,” said the group’s chair­man.

He added that for­eign ex­change con­straints af­fect­ed ANSA McAL’s au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and re­tail op­er­a­tions, in­flu­enc­ing in­ven­to­ry avail­abil­i­ty and tim­ing.

“We re­spond­ed sup­ply-chain con­trols, re­in­forc­ing sup­ply-chain arrange­ments and ex­e­cut­ing pric­ing and prod­uct-mix ac­tions to pro­tect prof­itabil­i­ty,” said Sab­ga.