Agos­ti­ni Ltd has un­der­gone a trans­for­ma­tion since 2020, more than dou­bling the scale of its op­er­a­tions through a com­bi­na­tion of strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions and steady or­gan­ic growth across its phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, health­care, man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness­es.

In 2020, Agos­ti­ni was large­ly a lo­cal en­ter­prise, op­er­at­ing in six mar­kets with rev­enues of $3.43 bil­lion and as­sets to­talling $2.71 bil­lion. Fast for­ward to to­day and the com­pa­ny has sig­nif­i­cant­ly widened its re­gion­al foot­print, now op­er­at­ing in 10 mar­kets, gen­er­at­ing $5.44 bil­lion in rev­enue and hold­ing $4.83 bil­lion in as­sets. The group's as­set base should be fur­ther boost­ed by two on­go­ing ac­qui­si­tions.

The Chris­t­ian Mout­tet–chaired group marked a ma­jor mile­stone in Ju­ly when it cel­e­brat­ed its 100th an­niver­sary. Last year, as part of that cen­ten­ni­al evo­lu­tion, the com­pa­ny in­tro­duced two core brands aimed at uni­fy­ing its iden­ti­ty across the re­gion. Aven­ta now hous­es Agos­ti­ni’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care busi­ness­es, while Aca­do rep­re­sents its man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion op­er­a­tions. The group al­so stream­lined its cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty last year, of­fi­cial­ly re­brand­ing from Agos­ti­ni’s to Agos­ti­ni in Feb­ru­ary.

Ver­ti­cal in­te­gra­tion has be­come a defin­ing fea­ture of the group’s strat­e­gy. Su­per­pharm Ltd and Mphar­ma­cy to­geth­er op­er­ate 20 re­tail out­lets, while Aven­ta Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd dis­trib­utes phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal brands through­out the mar­ket. In man­u­fac­tur­ing, In­ter­sol pro­duces per­son­al care items and Carlisle Lab­o­ra­to­ries man­u­fac­tures phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs and re­lat­ed prod­ucts. The group’s re­gion­al health­care ex­pan­sion was fur­ther strength­ened with Aven­ta Ja­maica Ltd (for­mer­ly Health Brands), mark­ing Agos­ti­ni’s first en­try in­to Ja­maica’s lu­cra­tive health­care sec­tor.

On the con­sumer side, Aca­do Ltd (for­mer­ly Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners Ltd) op­er­ates as a joint ven­ture with dis­tri­b­u­tion sub­sidiaries spread across the Caribbean. In 2025, the com­pa­ny ac­quired a 20 per cent stake in Aca­do Trad­ing Cana­da Ltd (for­mer­ly Chi­nook Trad­ing Cana­da), con­vert­ing it in­to a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary. Aca­do Trinidad Ltd man­u­fac­tures the Swiss brand of prod­ucts and oth­ers sold in more than 30 mar­kets, while oth­er Aca­do sub­sidiaries han­dle dis­tri­b­u­tion in the East­ern and South­ern Caribbean. Aca­do it­self is struc­tured as a 50-50 joint ven­ture be­tween Agos­ti­ni and Bar­ba­dos con­glom­er­ate God­dard En­ter­pris­es Ltd.

“So much has tran­spired over the past 100 years as our com­pa­ny has trans­formed it­self from its hum­ble be­gin­nings as a small fam­i­ly trad­ing firm in­to a di­ver­si­fied pub­licly trad­ed re­gion­al group op­er­at­ing across mul­ti­ple mar­kets,” Mout­tet re­flect­ed in the com­pa­ny’s re­cent 2025 earn­ings sum­ma­ry.

That trans­for­ma­tion has been dri­ven in no small part by ac­qui­si­tions. Since 2020, Agos­ti­ni’s sub­sidiary count has surged from 14 to 35 com­pa­nies. The im­pact is clear­ly vis­i­ble in the con­sumer prod­ucts seg­ment un­der Aca­do, where rev­enue ex­pand­ed by 38 per cent from $2.22 bil­lion to $3.06 bil­lion, while net prof­it jumped 90 per cent from $80 mil­lion to $152 mil­lion.

The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care seg­ment de­liv­ered even stronger top-line growth, with rev­enue climb­ing 88 per cent from $1.13 bil­lion to $2.12 bil­lion. Net prof­it in this seg­ment rose 72 per cent, mov­ing from $83 mil­lion to $143 mil­lion. Mean­while, the group’s en­er­gy, in­dus­tri­al and hold­ing com­pa­nies gen­er­at­ed $266 mil­lion in rev­enue and $13 mil­lion in net prof­it for 2025.

• Con­tin­ues on BG9

De­spite this ex­pan­sion, bot­tom-line growth has lagged the pace of rev­enue gains. Be­tween 2020 and 2025, Agos­ti­ni’s net prof­it in­creased 86 per cent from $168 mil­lion to $312 mil­lion, with $230 mil­lion at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers. Man­age­ment has at­trib­uted this gap to con­tin­ued rein­vest­ment across its busi­ness lines and the added costs as­so­ci­at­ed with debt fi­nanc­ing.

Even so, the strat­e­gy is yield­ing longer-term ben­e­fits. Agos­ti­ni is in­creas­ing­ly gen­er­at­ing rev­enue out­side T&T, where growth re­mains con­strained by for­eign ex­change short­ages. In 2020, 65 per cent of the group’s rev­enue—$2.22 bil­lion—came from T&T. By 2025, that share had de­clined to 56 per cent, even as ab­solute rev­enue from the do­mes­tic mar­ket rose to $3.06 bil­lion.

Agos­ti­ni Ltd’s re­cent ex­pan­sion dri­ve has been char­ac­terised by an ag­gres­sive ac­qui­si­tion strat­e­gy fund­ed large­ly through debt, re­sult­ing in a sharp rise in the group’s bor­row­ings be­tween 2020 and 2025.

The com­pa­ny’s to­tal debt bal­ance has climbed from $386.65 mil­lion in 2020 to $1.07 bil­lion in 2025, rep­re­sent­ing a 177 per cent in­crease. While Agos­ti­ni’s or­gan­ic growth ini­tia­tives across its var­i­ous mar­kets have re­quired some lev­el of bor­row­ing to fi­nance cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture, the ma­jor­i­ty of the in­crease in debt is linked to the group’s in­or­gan­ic growth strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly ac­qui­si­tions.

Since March 2021, Agos­ti­ni is es­ti­mat­ed to have bor­rowed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $598.21 mil­lion to fund ac­qui­si­tions across the group. A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of this was tied to the De­cem­ber 2022 ac­qui­si­tions of Aven­ta Bar­ba­dos Ltd (for­mer­ly Collins Ltd) and Carlisle Lab­o­ra­to­ries Ltd, which were fi­nanced through a mul­ti-cur­ren­cy loan to­talling $205.03 mil­lion, de­nom­i­nat­ed in TTD, BBD and USD.

Fur­ther ex­pan­sion fol­lowed in Au­gust 2023 with Agos­ti­ni’s en­try in­to the Ja­maican mar­ket through the ac­qui­si­tion of Aven­ta Ja­maica Ltd. This trans­ac­tion was sup­port­ed by ad­di­tion­al bor­row­ing of $119.92 mil­lion, equiv­a­lent to J$2.82 bil­lion.

Oth­er ac­qui­si­tions, in­clud­ing Os­car Fran­cois Lim­it­ed, In­ter­sol Ltd, Process Com­po­nents Lim­it­ed, Aca­do Trad­ing Cana­da Ltd and the Aven­ta Group op­er­a­tions in the Dutch Caribbean, were al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed through debt fi­nanc­ing pro­vid­ed by the group’s bank­ing part­ners. These ac­qui­si­tions form a cen­tral pil­lar of Agos­ti­ni’s strat­e­gy to broad­en its ge­o­graph­ic foot­print while deep­en­ing its par­tic­i­pa­tion across the val­ue chain, strength­en­ing the group’s reach and in­te­gra­tion through­out the North Amer­i­can re­gion.

The com­pa­ny now stands on the brink of sur­pass­ing $6 bil­lion in as­sets, pend­ing the com­ple­tion of its ac­qui­si­tions of Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd (PHL) and Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica) Lim­it­ed (MD­JL).

PHL, which op­er­ates restau­rant brands in­clud­ing KFC, Piz­za Hut, Sub­way, Star­bucks and TGI Fri­days, re­port­ed $958 mil­lion in as­sets as at Au­gust 31, along with $1.08 bil­lion in rev­enue and $59 mil­lion in net prof­it for the nine-month pe­ri­od. That trans­ac­tion re­mains sub­ject to ap­proval by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion. PHL is 52.9 per cent owned by Vic­tor E. Mout­tet Ltd (VEML) and con­nect­ed com­pa­nies, while Agos­ti­ni it­self is 57.8 per cent owned by VEML, and con­nect­ed com­pa­nies.

“For Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Ja­maica, we are work­ing with sup­pli­ers to ad­dress an over-con­cen­tra­tion in a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct cat­e­go­ry raised by the reg­u­la­tor and ex­pect to meet the re­quire­ments im­ment­ly,” Mout­tet said, while ad­dress­ing con­cerns sur­round­ing the MD­JL trans­ac­tion.

Ja­maica’s Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion has raised red flags over the ac­qui­si­tion due to po­ten­tial mo­nop­oly risks linked to in­sulin dis­tri­b­u­tion. Un­der the pro­posed struc­ture, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion would fall un­der Aven­ta Ja­maica, while con­sumer prod­ucts would be man­aged by Aca­do.

As at Sep­tem­ber 30, MD­JL re­port­ed $245 mil­lion in as­sets and $64 mil­lion in li­a­bil­i­ties. The Massy Hold­ings sub­sidiary gen­er­at­ed $352.44 mil­lion in rev­enue and $24 mil­lion in net prof­it for Massy’s 2025 fis­cal year.

Clos­er to home, Agos­ti­ni pushed back against re­cent claims of a health­care mo­nop­oly in T&T. In­vestor con­fi­dence ap­pears in­tact. The com­pa­ny’s share price has climbed from $24 in De­cem­ber 2020 to $62.85 in De­cem­ber 2025, while div­i­dends have near­ly dou­bled from $0.79 in 2020 to $1.53 in 2025. A div­i­dend of $1.15 is sched­uled for pay­ment on Feb­ru­ary 9.

Look­ing ahead, Agos­ti­ni CEO Bar­ry David faces the chal­lenge of sus­tain­ing this mo­men­tum as re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion in­ten­si­fies. Mus­son (Ja­maica) Ltd con­tin­ues its rapid re­gion­al ex­pan­sion, with sub­sidiary AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings Ltd ac­tive­ly ac­quir­ing busi­ness­es across Ja­maica and the East­ern Caribbean. Still, with a new Mi­a­mi of­fice, ex­pand­ing op­er­a­tions in Ja­maica and Cana­da and a deep­en­ing val­ue chain, the Agos­ti­ni share­hold­ers have am­ple rea­son to be en­cour­aged by both what the com­pa­ny has ac­com­plished—and what lies ahead.