Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd is plan­ning to in­crease its foot­print in the Caribbean, even as the restau­rant fran­chise com­pa­ny de­clared a 51.24 per cent in­crease in its af­ter-tax prof­its for the first six months of its 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

Pres­tige Hold­ings chair­man, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, in his re­port to share­hold­ers, said the com­pa­ny start­ed con­struc­tion of its sec­ond TGI Fri­days restau­rant in Port­more, Ja­maica, which it ex­pects to open in the fourth quar­ter.

The com­pa­ny plans to open three new Star­bucks cafes, two in Trinidad and one in Guyana, as well as a new Piz­za Hut restau­rant in the fourth quar­ter.

In the quar­ter end­ed May 31, 2025, Mout­tet said Pres­tige Hold­ings al­so com­plet­ed three ma­jor restau­rant re­mod­els and re­lo­cat­ed its Sub­way restau­rant on In­de­pen­dence Square to a brand-new de­sign con­cept store on the cor­ner of Cha­con St and In­de­pen­dence Square South.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s con­sol­i­dat­ed unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, Pres­tige Hold­ings record­ed af­ter-tax prof­it af­ter tax of $35.18 mil­lion for the six months end­ed May 31, 2025 com­pared to the $23,26m prof­it record­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

In his re­port, Mout­tet not­ed, “Group sales in­creased by 8 per cent to $707 mil­lion from $655 mil­lion, and prof­it be­fore tax im­proved by 46 per cent to $51 mil­lion from $35 mil­lion when com­pared to the pri­or year. Cash flow from op­er­a­tions was $138 mil­lion and we end­ed the half year with $150 mil­lion in cash. Bank bor­row­ings re­main low at $54 mil­lion.”

The Pres­tige Hold­ings chair­man ex­plained the ex­tend­ed Car­ni­val sea­son played a role in the in­crease in sales for the pe­ri­od.

“The strong sales per­for­mance in the sec­ond quar­ter 2025 rel­a­tive to the first quar­ter and pri­or year is pri­mar­i­ly due to the tim­ing of Car­ni­val which oc­curred in the first quar­ter 2024, but fell dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter 2025.

“As men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous re­port, the sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in prof­itabil­i­ty is par­tial­ly due to non-re­cur­ring charges in the pri­or year that were not re­peat­ed in the cur­rent pe­ri­od and will mod­er­ate as the year pro­gress­es.”

Mout­tet al­so ac­knowl­edged the takeover bid pre­sent­ed by Agos­ti­ni Ltd, a com­pa­ny which he al­so chairs, in the re­port while stat­ing he has re­cused him­self from the process.

“On June 17, 2025, we re­ceived no­ti­fi­ca­tion of a pro­posed takeover bid of our group from Agos­ti­ni Lim­it­ed. A spe­cial com­mit­tee of the Pres­tige Board has been es­tab­lished to re­view the take-over bid and will be in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Pres­tige share­hold­ers in due course. As chair­man of both Pres­tige and Agos­ti­ni, I have re­cused my­self and have had no par­tic­i­pa­tion in these dis­cus­sions.”

Agos­ti­ni has an­nounced its in­ten­tion to ac­quire Pres­tige Hold­ings through a share swap of­fer. Un­der the arrange­ment Pres­tige share­hold­ers will re­ceive one Agos­ti­ni share for every 4.8 Pres­tige shares held.

The of­fer clos­es at 4pm on Ju­ly 21, 2025.

Pres­tige Hold­ings is the par­ent com­pa­ny for the KFC, Piz­za Hut, Sub­way and Star­bucks out­lets in T&T, the TGI Fri­days in T&T and Ja­maica and Pres­tige Hold­ings Guyana (Star­bucks Guyana).