A rough start, which gave way to a strong fin­ish in 2025, has giv­en the ANSA McAL group en­cour­age­ment that mo­men­tum is in their favour.

At the re­lease of ANSA McAL’s 2025 year-end fi­nan­cial re­sults at Samaan Es­tate on Tues­day, the group re­port­ed prof­its were back in the bil­lions. Group CEO An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III was con­fi­dent that the con­glom­er­ate was head­ing in the right di­rec­tion de­spite var­i­ous chal­lenges.

Over the past six months, sev­er­al ad­just­ments to gov­ern­ment poli­cies have di­rect­ly im­pact­ed the group’s op­er­a­tions and ex­pens­es. These in­clude the in­crease in ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and, more re­cent­ly, the de­ci­sion by state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to hike nat­ur­al gas prices for man­u­fac­tur­ers.

When asked about these chal­lenges at Tues­day’s event, the ANSA McAL CEO took it in stride:

“Look, Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, the new Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy items, quite frankly, are noth­ing new. We con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in the evolv­ing mar­ket where pol­i­cy and var­i­ous oth­er fis­cal and oth­er mea­sures that any Gov­ern­ment takes not just in Trinidad but else­where, con­tin­ues to form part of how you op­er­ate. As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, our agili­ty and our abil­i­ty to fac­tor, ab­sorb, and ma­noeu­vre ac­cord­ing­ly, is ev­i­denced by the re­sults,” said Sab­ga III, “We got to do what it is that we have to do, and we don’t op­er­ate in an en­vi­ron­ment that’s an open play­ing field for all. And that is where the true tes­ta­ment and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty, the depth, ca­pac­i­ty of man­age­ment and oth­er things that gives us our com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage, and it’s at times this year, that the group is re­al­ly able to show it­self.”

He said the var­i­ous pol­i­cy changes had on­ly meant the com­pa­ny would have to con­tin­ue im­prov­ing its op­er­a­tions go­ing for­ward.

He said, “What it has im­pact­ed for us is the need for us to con­tin­ue to strive for op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies, and that that men­tal­i­ty and that way of do­ing busi­ness is not some­thing new for us. That’s some­thing we have to do. We have to work with our sup­pli­ers, and we have to work with our cus­tomers. We have to con­sid­er how those changes could be mit­i­gat­ed to­wards sus­tained busi­ness. Be­cause that’s re­al­ly what we are about, how we con­tin­ue to cre­ate a sus­tained per­for­mance and a sus­tained busi­ness pos­si­bil­i­ty for all of the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers.”

ANSA McAL was not un­fa­mil­iar with ob­sta­cles as al­most a year ago the com­pa­ny had en­dured some set­backs. This came af­ter the com­pa­ny’s US in­vest­ment Bleachtech ini­tial­ly stum­bled due to some en­vi­ron­men­tal and weath­er chal­lenges in the first quar­ter of 2025. That was sub­se­quent­ly fol­lowed by a dou­bling of prof­itabil­i­ty by the mid­dle of the year.

ANSA McAL chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Nicholas Jack­man sum­marised the turn­around of the group’s for­tunes at the event.

“The fourth quar­ter was strong with a move­ment across all key per­for­mance met­rics and set­ting a very good start­ing point for 2026. For the full year, the group re­cov­ered well af­ter hav­ing a chal­leng­ing Q1, and we end­ed 2025 with im­proved mar­gins, ev­i­dence of ex­e­cu­tion and op­er­at­ing dis­ci­pline,” he said.

Jack­man high­light­ed the group’s sig­nif­i­cant growth in rev­enue from the US and Guyana mar­kets, as he ex­plained.

“In terms of our con­tri­bu­tion from our ge­o­graph­ic units. Two years ago, we were just cross­ing the $7 bil­lion mark. Now we’re at $7.78 bil­lion in rev­enue.”

He ex­plained that two years ago, T&T ac­count­ed for 73 per cent of the group’s rev­enue, now it con­tributes 66 per cent. Con­verse­ly, the US con­tributed 1 per cent of ANSA McAL’s rev­enues in 2023, and in 2025 US con­tributed to 7 per cent of group’s rev­enues.

He ex­plained that in that pe­ri­od, Guyana rose from 7 per cent in terms of con­tri­bu­tion to group’s over­all rev­enue to the com­pa­ny’s sec­ond largest ju­ris­dic­tion, con­tribut­ing just over 12 per cent of group rev­enue.

The ANSA McAL CEO how­ev­er, clar­i­fied this did not mean that the group’s busi­ness in T&T was on the wane, but rather sym­bol­ic of the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess­ful ex­pan­sion in these mar­kets.

“First­ly, it’s not that our busi­ness in Trinidad has de­clined. It is that our busi­ness in Trinidad has de­clined rel­a­tive to the oth­er ar­eas of growth. So, giv­en that we’ve had a very sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in the Unit­ed States that has grown there and giv­en that Guyana con­tin­ues to grow, Trinidad, as a rel­a­tive con­trib­u­tor to the en­tire group, is gen­er­at­ing less. It is not that our busi­ness in Trinidad has got less,” said Sab­ga, who ex­plained that the com­pa­ny’s in­vest­ments in the coun­tries had borne fruit sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the past year.

“As you’re aware, we have brought in Bleachtech in the pri­or pe­ri­od, and we con­tin­ue to lever­age that ca­pac­i­ty and that as­set base to on­go­ing­ly bol­ster rev­enues and prof­itabil­i­ty. So our in­vest­ment the­sis there re­mains very ro­bust, and we cer­tain­ly are on­go­ing­ly see­ing the growth po­ten­tial that that of­fers,” he said, “As far as Guyana is con­cerned, it comes as no sur­prise that the Guyanese econ­o­my is per­form­ing quite in­ter­est­ing­ly. We have been par­tic­i­pants in Guyana for quite a few decades, con­tin­ue to in­vest along­side that growth and grab growth as that mar­ket grows.”

The re­turns seen, Sab­ga ex­plained, had giv­en cre­dence to the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to freeze div­i­dend pay­ments for a three-year pe­ri­od to fund ex­pan­sion plans.

He said, “Look at the fi­nan­cial re­sults. You’re see­ing the group’s earn­ings base trend­ing well to­wards dou­bling. And as we con­tin­ue to seek to cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient use of cap­i­tal and al­so the pro­ceeds of the liq­uid­i­ty we are gen­er­at­ing. We an­tic­i­pate be­ing able to re­turn to a healthy div­i­dend as we promised in the fu­ture, and cer­tain­ly you’ll see us trend­ing to­wards an earn­ings base that’s com­men­su­rate with it.”

Once again, he urged in­vestors to get on board, not­ing that the com­pa­ny’s share price re­mained a great val­ue for mon­ey de­spite the pay­out freeze.

He ex­plained, “We con­tin­ue to see an in­vest­ing pub­lic that wants to con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in our share. So we see the share con­tin­ue to trade. We are ob­serv­ing a, what I would call it, and I have been quot­ed for hav­ing said it. The cur­rent share price is a gift, and it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty that share­hold­ers, once in a life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty that the in­vest­ing pub­lic ought not to miss. You can buy a share of ANSA AL for less than a six-pack of beer.”

The ANSA McAL CEO, how­ev­er, would not speak on fu­ture ex­pan­sion plans at the event on Tues­day, but felt the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent port­fo­lio was strong and was like­ly to car­ry for­ward its mo­men­tum.