Rapheal John-Lall

For the first six months of 2015, the ANSA McAL Group achieved rev­enue of $2,871 mil­lion and prof­it be­fore tax of $459 mil­lion–an 11 per cent im­prove­ment over the pre­vi­ous year.

Com­ment­ing on the groups' unau­dit­ed re­sults for the six months end­ed June 30, group chair­man and CEO, A Nor­man Sab­ga said: "I think these re­sults speak for them­selves. Our ser­vices com­pa­nies per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than last year. We be­lieve in the next two months the me­dia com­pa­ny will pick up.

"In terms of the au­to­mo­tive sec­tor, rev­enues are down but our per­cent­age of the mar­ket has grown. That is how we mea­sure an in­dus­try, the whole mar­ket is down but we in­crease our share. Our bev­er­age in­dus­tries in the is­lands have done well. Bar­ba­dos is do­ing bet­ter than last year."

Sab­ga, who spoke yes­ter­day at a stock­bro­kers' meet­ing at the Tatil Build­ing, Mar­aval, de­scribed the fi­nan­cial re­sults are a "mixed bag."

"Over­all, in the mar­ket that we find our­selves in, the re­sults are not bad," he said.

Com­ment­ing on the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion, Sab­ga said it is "scarce" and they are mon­i­tor­ing it.

"In the par­ent com­pa­ny our con­sol­i­dat­ed re­sults show a lit­tle more costs be­cause we did bor­row US$20 mil­lion which we did to sat­is­fy for­eign ex­change needs. It has not yet af­fect­ed us but it con­tin­ues to be scarce. It will hurt our rep­u­ta­tion over­seas if we can­not pay on time, so over­all it is some­thing that we are look­ing at very close­ly and it is some­thing of con­cern. I do not think we are dif­fer­ent and we mir­ror the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try," he said.

Sab­ga said the ben­e­fit of be­ing a con­glom­er­ate is that when one of the sec­tors is down, oth­ers are grow­ing.

"Over the last 15 years I have been the CEO and I have demon­strat­ed that year on year," he said.

He added that there are still many ef­fi­cien­cies in the group.

"We think of the glass be­ing half full rather than half emp­ty and we be­lieve there are a lot of ef­fi­cien­cies to be had. We in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in sys­tems and I be­lieve we un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the time it would take to set­tle and reap the ben­e­fits of huge in­vest­ments in sys­tems in the Group.

"In man­u­fac­tur­ing we have bought state of the art equip­ment and there is a learn­ing curve with that. We are bet­ter off than we were but there is a long way to go," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the unau­dit­ed re­sults, earn­ings per share in­creased to $1.75 and the di­rec­tors have ap­proved an in­ter­im div­i­dend of 0.30 cents per share.