The ANSA McAL Group of com­pa­nies in­creased its cash po­si­tion by more than $1 bil­lion last year.

Ac­cord­ing to ANSA McAL’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults, its cash and cash equiv­a­lents at the end of 31 De­cem­ber 2020 was $2.8 bil­lion.

The cash and cash equiv­a­lents at the start of the year was $1.8 bil­lion.

“Al­though our prof­its are less than they were the year be­fore, our cash re­serves have grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly and this augers well for fu­ture growth and pos­si­ble ac­qui­si­tions,” Group chair­man A. Nor­man Sab­ga said at the ANSA McAL Stock­bro­kers’ meet­ing which was held via Mi­crosoft Teams yes­ter­day.

“The cash flow and fi­nan­cial po­si­tion is cer­tain­ly quite an in­ter­est­ing one where we were able to, with very dili­gent cash man­age­ment notwith­stand­ing sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, we have worked through our in­ven­to­ry and re­ceiv­able and ex­pense man­age­ment and were able to cre­ate a sub­stan­tive net cash in­crease of $1 bil­lion in cash and cash equiv­a­lents in the pe­ri­od. It is cer­tain­ly an in­ter­est­ing and im­por­tant re­sult,” Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said.

ANSA McAL record­ed a prof­it of $503.8 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2020.

In 2019 ANSA McAL made a prof­it of $776.3 mil­lion.

Sab­ga III said ANSA McAL record­ed some “for­mi­da­ble” re­sults con­sid­er­ing the con­text of what was 2020 and the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We were able to main­tain prof­itabil­i­ty for each quar­ter dur­ing the full year 2020,” Sab­ga III said.

Sab­ga III said the op­er­at­ing prof­it of $752 mil­lion was cer­tain­ly a “ma­jor de­cline” com­pared to 2019.

In 2019 ANSA McAL’s op­er­at­ing prof­it was $1.07 bil­lion.

Sab­ga III said an im­por­tant as­pect of the fi­nan­cial year was the fact that none of ANSA McAL’s em­ploy­ees lost their jobs as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic.

“There is cer­tain­ly quite a lot for us to be spir­it­ed about and to feel great about notwith­stand­ing the glob­al con­text that we faced,” Sab­ga III said.

“We gave a com­mit­ment and we ac­tu­al­ly stood by the com­mit­ment and we pre­served every job and we took very se­ri­ous­ly the pro­tec­tion of the health and well-be­ing and safe­ty of our em­ploy­ees across the re­gion,” he said.

Sab­ga III said the con­glom­er­ate re­mains com­mit­ted to in­vest­ing in COVID-19 vac­cines to help the re­gion with the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment.

Chair­man Sab­ga stat­ed that while the Group’s re­sults were “in­escapably im­pact­ed by the pan­dem­ic” the per­for­mance demon­strat­ed re­silience.

The Group’s long term fi­nan­cial po­si­tion was strength­ened with the gear­ing ra­tio as mea­sured by the to­tal in­ter­est-bear­ing debt to share­hold­ers’ eq­ui­ty be­ing re­duced to 9.8 per cent from 10.3 per cent.

ANSA McAL de­clared a fi­nal div­i­dend of $1.50 per share.

“We are in­deed proud of how we pre­vailed through this de­bil­i­tat­ing glob­al pan­dem­ic and how we have reaf­firmed our Group as a re­silient and so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble con­glom­er­ate, ide­al­ly po­si­tioned for re­cov­ery and a bright fu­ture,” the Chair­man stat­ed.