An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

A sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in first-quar­ter prof­its at An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has not shak­en con­fi­dence at the board lev­el, with chair­man Gary Hunt out­lin­ing a strat­e­gy an­chored in ef­fi­cien­cy gains, ex­port ex­pan­sion and op­er­a­tional dis­ci­pline to dri­ve re­cov­ery through the rest of 2026.

Speak­ing in a one-on-one in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, Hunt de­scribed the 14.5 per cent fall in af­ter-tax prof­its to $19.4 mil­lion for the three months end­ed March 31 as “very mi­nor” with­in the con­text of mount­ing cost pres­sures and struc­tur­al changes across the in­dus­try.

“Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, I think we’ve done very well; you would start to see a re­cov­ery from the sec­ond to the fourth quar­ters. This is a very tem­po­rary mea­sure,” Hunt said, adding that cost-sav­ing mea­sures are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to sup­port im­proved re­sults and pro­tect share­hold­er val­ue.

He out­lined that the first-quar­ter re­sults re­flect a com­plex op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment where rev­enue growth con­tin­ues, but prof­itabil­i­ty is be­ing squeezed by high­er pro­duc­tion costs, par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­cise du­ties and in­put pres­sures.

De­spite the dip in prof­it, Hunt not­ed the group’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion re­mains sol­id, with to­tal as­sets in­creas­ing year-on-year, sup­port­ed by high­er in­vest­ment bal­ances and im­proved work­ing cap­i­tal lev­els. Liq­uid­i­ty al­so re­mains sta­ble as the com­pa­ny ac­tive­ly man­ages its cash flows in re­sponse to in­creased tax­a­tion and in­ven­to­ry re­quire­ments.

Prof­it pres­sure, rev­enue re­silience

For the three-month pe­ri­od, the chair­man said the to­tal rev­enue in­creased by $6 mil­lion, or three per cent, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year. That growth was un­der­pinned by a strong per­for­mance in the do­mes­tic mar­ket, which ex­pand­ed by 16 per cent year-on-year, dri­ven by sus­tained de­mand for An­gos­tu­ra’s core brands, in­clud­ing White Oak, For­res Park and its Ready-to-Drink port­fo­lio, such as 420 and Cu­ba­ta.

Even as sales vol­umes im­proved, mar­gins came un­der pres­sure. Hunt in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny made a de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion to ab­sorb a por­tion of the in­creased costs rather than pass them ful­ly on to con­sumers, in or­der to main­tain com­pet­i­tive­ness and avoid damp­en­ing de­mand.

“It is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult; we have ab­sorbed as much of it as we can with­out sac­ri­fic­ing too much prof­it. We had to find a bal­ance so that we could have mar­ketabil­i­ty, vol­ume, move­ment and still main­tain prof­itabil­i­ty,” Hunt said.

That bal­anc­ing act, he ex­plained, is on­go­ing, with ad­just­ments ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue as the com­pa­ny re­sponds to chang­ing con­di­tions.

“So we had to find the right yin and yang, and as we go along, we will have mi­nor tweaks,” Hunt said.
While prof­itabil­i­ty has been im­pact­ed, Hunt point­ed to en­cour­ag­ing signs on the sales side, not­ing that An­gos­tu­ra’s per­for­mance con­trasts with broad­er trends across the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“When you look out there, their sales are drop­ping. Our sales are in­creas­ing, but we are get­ting a lit­tle hit on the prof­it be­fore tax (PBT) side be­cause the cost of pro­duc­tion went up through the ex­cise du­ty,” Hunt said.

The chair­man main­tained that the com­pa­ny is not re­treat­ing in the face of these pres­sures, but is in­stead fo­cussing on ex­e­cu­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy to pro­tect mar­gins and dri­ve re­cov­ery in the com­ing quar­ters.

Ex­port mar­kets take cen­tre stage

A cen­tral pil­lar of An­gos­tu­ra’s strat­e­gy is an ag­gres­sive push in­to ex­port mar­kets, with Hunt mak­ing it clear that fu­ture growth will be dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly out­side of T&T.

“T&T is a lit­tle dot. We have the whole world; the com­pa­ny’s fo­cus is on ex­pand­ing its glob­al foot­print.”

Dif­fer­ences in tax­a­tion regimes across mar­kets have cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for more com­pet­i­tive pric­ing abroad. Hunt point­ed to the dis­par­i­ty with­in Cari­com, where low­er ex­cise du­ties al­low An­gos­tu­ra prod­ucts to be sold at more at­trac­tive price points than in the do­mes­tic mar­ket.

“If you no­tice, our bot­tle of White Oak Trinidad is a lot more ex­pen­sive than our bot­tle of White Oak Grena­da, sim­ply be­cause of the ex­cise du­ties,” Hunt stat­ed.

Against that back­drop, the com­pa­ny is tar­get­ting a long-term shift in its rev­enue mix, with ex­ports ac­count­ing for the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of earn­ings.

“The goal is with­out los­ing mar­ket share lo­cal­ly, we would like lo­cal­ly to be 10 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue and 90 per cent on the out­side,” the chair­man in­di­cat­ed. That strat­e­gy, he said, builds on progress made in 2025, when An­gos­tu­ra re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­its of $153.32 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, rep­re­sent­ing a 6.27 per cent in­crease over 2024. To­tal ex­port rev­enue ac­count­ed for 42 per cent of group rev­enue, up from 40 per cent the pre­vi­ous year, re­flect­ing steady gains in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

In its fi­nan­cials for De­cem­ber 31, 2025, the com­pa­ny said the growth in brand­ed rums was a key dri­ver, con­tribut­ing 79 per cent of to­tal rev­enue growth, sup­port­ed by a 58 per cent ex­pan­sion in that seg­ment along­side a one per cent in­crease in bit­ters.

The com­pa­ny is al­so ad­dress­ing struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers to en­try in de­vel­oped mar­kets. Hunt point­ed to up­dat­ed pre­mi­um rum pack­ag­ing de­signed to meet sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed King­dom, where pre­vi­ous pack­ag­ing con­straints lim­it­ed shelf place­ment.

“That now has been solved, so we ex­pect to see a big up­take in the com­ing months,” he men­tioned.
Lo­gis­tics chal­lenges that af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions ear­li­er in the year are al­so be­gin­ning to ease. Hunt not­ed that dis­rup­tions in­volv­ing tank con­tain­ers used to trans­port bulk al­co­hol cre­at­ed bot­tle­necks on key ship­ping routes.
“That is eas­ing up, so we ex­pect to be back to where we were,” he elab­o­rat­ed.

Ef­fi­cien­cy dri­ve and work­force strat­e­gy

Along­side its mar­ket strat­e­gy, An­gos­tu­ra is un­der­tak­ing an in­ter­nal trans­for­ma­tion fo­cussed on ef­fi­cien­cy, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Hunt de­scribed a shift to­wards a more dis­ci­plined op­er­at­ing mod­el aimed at ex­tract­ing greater val­ue from the com­pa­ny’s re­sources, par­tic­u­lar­ly its work­force.

“What we are try­ing to do is to op­ti­mise for em­ploy­ees to get the high­est pos­si­ble rate of re­turn. We can­not do things the same way and ex­pect dif­fer­ent re­sults,” Hunt re­marked.

The em­pha­sis is on ex­e­cu­tion, with per­for­mance mea­sured against clear out­put bench­marks. Hunt in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny is em­bed­ding a mer­it-based sys­tem where ad­vance­ment is de­ter­mined strict­ly by re­sults.

“It is a mer­it-based sys­tem that will rise to the top,” he out­lined.

He stressed that the cul­tur­al shift is in­tend­ed to dri­ve sus­tained im­prove­ments in ef­fi­cien­cy across all ar­eas of the busi­ness, re­in­forc­ing the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to com­pete in a more chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“It’s a lev­el of dis­ci­pline, a lev­el of re­silience, a lev­el of fo­cus that is per­me­at­ing through the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Hunt said.

Labour re­la­tions re­main a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of this process. Hunt de­scribed the com­pa­ny’s re­la­tion­ship with its recog­nised union Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union as con­struc­tive, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that ad­just­ments and ne­go­ti­a­tions are part of the tran­si­tion.

“From time to time, it’s not per­fect. Things will hap­pen, but you work it out,” Hunt said.

He said An­gos­tu­ra con­tin­ues to po­si­tion it­self as a lead­ing em­ploy­er with­in the sec­tor, with com­pet­i­tive com­pen­sa­tion and ben­e­fits, while em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“What we want to make sure is bang for buck. We get the max­i­mum out of the work­force at all times,” Hunt com­ment­ed. The fo­cus on ex­e­cu­tion ex­tends be­yond in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions to over­all cor­po­rate per­for­mance, with Hunt un­der­scor­ing the need for mea­sur­able re­sults.

“Don’t tell me, show me, show me where we can get ef­fi­cien­cies,” Hunt shared.

Out­look and share­hold­er re­turns

Hunt char­ac­terised 2026 as a tran­si­tion year shaped by ex­ter­nal pres­sures, in­clud­ing tax­a­tion changes and glob­al sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, but main­tained that the com­pa­ny is po­si­tioned to de­liv­er im­proved re­sults over time.

He point­ed to ear­ly in­di­ca­tors of re­cov­ery, in­clud­ing con­tin­ued growth in sales and a mar­gin­al in­crease in earn­ings per share, not­ing that even small gains scale sig­nif­i­cant­ly across the com­pa­ny’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly 97 mil­lion shares.

“Well, we’ve al­ready shown an in­crease by one cent when you mul­ti­ply that by 97 mil­lion shares, it’s a lot of mon­ey,” Hunt said.

The com­pa­ny’s longer-term ob­jec­tive is to strength­en prof­itabil­i­ty to the point where it can de­liv­er high­er re­turns to share­hold­ers, in­clud­ing im­proved div­i­dend pay­outs. “At some point, the goal is to be able to main­tain a dol­lar per share div­i­dend,” Hunt said.

Look­ing ahead, Hunt in­di­cat­ed that main­tain­ing op­er­a­tional dis­ci­pline and sus­tain­ing cur­rent mo­men­tum will be crit­i­cal, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the com­pa­ny nav­i­gates on­go­ing ex­ter­nal chal­lenges.

“If we keep that when 2027, 2028, 2029 turn around, we’re not go­ing to shuf­fle back. We’re go­ing to keep the stan­dard, keep the in­ten­si­ty, and keep grow­ing An­gos­tu­ra,” Hunt added.