The ANSA McAL group is hop­ing that share­hold­ers rein­vest their div­i­dends back in­to the com­pa­ny, which can amount to just about TT$1 bil­lion.

“We would be re­al­lo­cat­ing $300 mil­lion by three (years) to re­cap­i­tal­is­ing the busi­ness,” An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies ex­plained to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing its an­nu­al meet­ing, which took place on Thurs­day.

He out­lined that the group was well poised for ex­tra­or­di­nary, sus­tain­able growth and no longer look­ing for a pas­sive in­come.

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Sab­ga said he had ab­solute­ly no re­grets at the group’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend its div­i­dends for three years in or­der to re­al­lo­cate cap­i­tal to fund fu­ture ac­qui­si­tions, as well as con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy and au­toma­tion to dri­ve ef­fi­cien­cies and op­ti­mise sup­ply chains.

He said the sus­pen­sion of div­i­dends is go­ing to cor­re­late with very sub­stan­tial growth and it is go­ing to en­sure the de­liv­ery of fu­ture pros­per­i­ty.

“The re­al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources to sup­port the in­vest­ment hori­zon and al­so the fu­ture sus­tain­able de­liv­ery of in­come and div­i­dends is not some­thing we’re re­think­ing and not some­thing that we’re re­gret­ting,” Sab­ga said.

The ANSA McAL group paid out $1.80 per share in div­i­dends in the four-year pe­ri­od 2021 to 2024. With 176,197,617 shares in is­sue, that equals $317.15 mil­lion (US$47 mil­lion) a year or $1.26 bil­lion (US$188 mil­lion) over the four-year pe­ri­od.

At Thurs­day’s meet­ing, ANSA McAL’s chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer An­dre Jef­fers out­lined to share­hold­ers how the rein­vest­ment would be ben­e­fi­cial to them in the long term.

“The tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the div­i­dend, there’s an el­e­ment in there where we are trust­ing you to rein­vest and so I think it’s im­por­tant that we share that trust back to our share­hold­ers in terms of let­ting them see the ar­eas and the growth pools.

“... What makes the ANSA McAL group unique is re­al­ly how di­ver­si­fied we are. At times from the out­side look­ing in there may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be that clar­i­ty from the share­hold­er around where growth is go­ing to come from. So we be­lieve through our strate­gic prac­tis­es and our re­view across our port­fo­lio there are three core sec­tors that will be the levers for su­per­nor­mal growth for the ANSA McAL group of the next few years,” Jef­fers said.

He made it clear this does not mean that the oth­er parts of the port­fo­lio are not on point to grow.

In pro­vid­ing fur­ther de­tails about the growth ar­eas, Jef­fers ex­plained, “There’s some ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties across our port­fo­lio but in terms of that su­per nor­mal growth , that growth in high growth mar­kets, in mar­kets that al­low us and af­ford us af­ford the abil­i­ty to di­ver­si­fy our cur­ren­cy, we be­lieve that the bev­er­age, bank­ing and in­sur­ance, bleach sec­tors, and in the bleach case a sub­sec­tor, we be­lieve these to be the ar­eas of the biggest growth pools for us over the next few years.”

Fur­ther, he not­ed these busi­ness­es con­tribute very sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the group’s prof­itabil­i­ty, adding that there is “scale in all them.”

“...Very strong re­turn pro­file, high bar­ri­ers to the en­try. These are things that we do well and we think we do bet­ter than most and we can and will ex­port that ca­pa­bil­i­ty across the hemi­sphere and in some in­stances across the globe. That’s what sep­a­rates this three,” Jef­fers said.

Not­ing that the bev­er­age busi­ness con­tin­ues to be one of the group’s strongest per­form­ers, he adds the com­pa­ny has a great of as­pi­ra­tion in this space and has a line of sight to sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties to be­come the “brew­ers of the re­gion.”

“And not just the brew­ers of the re­gion, but we al­so be­lieve that growth will come through ex­ten­sions even pass al­co­hol and beer...Mak­ing beer sexy, again, with new flavours, new for­mats, ready-to-drink bev­er­ages the new trend and con­tin­u­ing the in­no­va­tion that we’ve had in that space.

“Ex­plor­ing the po­ten­tial to get in­to spir­its, rums and the dis­tillery busi­ness and then fo­cus­ing on health and well­ness, you’ll be aware that this new gen­er­a­tion is very fo­cussed on health and well­ness and every­thing they con­sume. That seg­ment is one of the fastest grow­ing sub­seg­ments with­in the bev­er­age sec­tor. And so when you think ANSA McAL you may think beer, but we think to­tal bev­er­age and that’s where our growth is go­ing to con­tin­ue to come from,” Jef­fers added.

The bank­ing and in­sur­ance sec­tor, he said, al­so has space for sig­nif­i­cant growth.

Jef­fers said the group is cur­rent­ly re­struc­tur­ing its fi­nan­cial sec­tor busi­ness­es to de­liv­er scale and ef­fi­cien­cy with a fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny struc­ture, adding that the re­sults are yet to come.

“And as we com­bine the pow­er of ANSA Mer­chant Bank with our re­tail bank, ANSA Bank that will al­low us an ex­treme­ly pow­er­ful plat­form to lever­age low­er cost of funds and get high­er mar­gins in our high yield­ing busi­ness and so, this is a plat­form that you should feel very ex­cit­ed about,” Jef­fers added.

In its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, ANSA McAL de­clared prof­it af­ter tax of $675.54 mil­lion, an in­crease of 13.6 per cent com­pared to the $594.48 mil­lion prof­it in 2023.

For the two months from the date of the ac­qui­si­tion, Bleachtech con­tributed $67.7 mil­lion to­wards the group’s rev­enue of $7.4 bil­lion. Bleachtech record­ed a prof­it be­fore tax of $36.5 mil­lion in the last two month of 2024. The group record­ed prof­it be­fore tax of $905.8 mil­lion for all of its 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

Bleachtech, which is based in Cleve­land, Ohio, op­er­ates two chlo­ral­ka­li plants in Seville, Ohio and Pe­ters­burg, Vir­ginia that pro­duce sodi­um hypochlo­rite (bleach), sodi­um hy­drox­ide (caus­tic so­da) and hy­drochlo­ric acid.

The pur­chase price was US$327 mil­lion.

In the three months end­ed March 31, 2025, ANSA McAL re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $65.02 mil­lion, a de­cline of 48.5 per cent com­pared to the pri­or year’s first quar­ter prof­it of $126.33 mil­lion.

Dur­ing a stake­hold­ers meet­ing in May, Sab­ga said, “The group closed the Bleachtech trans­ac­tion in No­vem­ber 2024, and in the first quar­ter of 2025, the com­pa­ny was im­pact­ed by what is af­fec­tion­ate­ly called the big freeze. Hav­ing op­er­at­ed a chlo­rine busi­ness in the Caribbean for over 40 years, the group has dealt with many things, but freez­ing over was not one of them.  

“Apart from the plant, and the pipes in the plant freez­ing, we re­alised that you can­not treat ice. We end­ed up in a very mut­ed mar­ket, and so our plant had some chal­lenges. That af­ford­ed us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring for­ward some of the much-need­ed in­ter­ven­tions and some of the much-need­ed re­pair work for the plant and equip­ment,” Sab­ga said.

He added that ANSA McAL bought a busi­ness that was op­er­at­ing at sub-44 per cent ef­fi­cien­cy. I’m hap­py to re­port that the team has done quite a bit of work and the re­li­a­bil­i­ty and op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cies of the plant are north of 60 per cent and tread­ing up­wards,” he ex­plained.