PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Two years af­ter a suc­cess­ful list­ing on the Ja­maican Stock Ex­change, Trinida­di­an im­porter and dis­trib­u­tor AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) was of­fi­cial­ly list on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change TTSE).

Michael Cony­ers, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of AS­BH said Fri­day’s list­ing was in keep­ing with a promise made when the com­pa­ny was ac­quired in 2022 by Ja­maican com­pa­ny Se­prod Ltd.

“This list­ing ful­fills a com­mit­ment we made when we ac­quired the busi­ness back in 2022, to list on as Bry­den’s home ex­change. We are very proud that most of our em­ploy­ees are al­ready share­hold­ers and own­ers in our busi­ness, this align­ment sets our com­pa­ny apart, cre­ates a deep cul­ture of own­er­ship and en­sures that the val­ue we cre­ate is broad­ly shared,” Cony­ers said.

Some 1,499,251,189 AS­BH or­di­nary shares were list­ed along with 30,403,000 class A pref­er­ence shares, which is list­ed among the TTSE’s US-dol­lar eq­ui­ty.

TTSE CEO Eva Mitchell ex­plained that AS­BH was list­ed by in­tro­duc­tion. A list­ing by in­tro­duc­tion does not raise cap­i­tal but it al­lows ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers of the com­pa­ny to trade their shares, po­si­tion­ing the com­pa­ny for fu­ture cap­i­tal-rais­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“It al­so po­si­tions the com­pa­ny with the op­tion to raise cap­i­tal in the fu­ture through mech­a­nisms such as an ad­di­tion­al pub­lic of­fer­ing, cre­at­ing fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vestor par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“Im­por­tant­ly, this list­ing will al­so raise the pro­file of the com­pa­ny re­gion­al­ly, po­si­tion­ing AS Bry­dens as a true Caribbean en­ter­prise on two ex­changes in our re­gion. This list­ing sig­nal sig­nals con­fi­dence, not on­ly in the strength of as Bry­dens busi­ness mod­el, but al­so in the re­silience and po­ten­tial of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change,” said Mitchell.

Cony­ers ex­plained the list­ing was part of the com­pa­ny’s aim to ex­pand.

Cony­ers and AS­BH di­rec­tor Nicholas Scott con­firmed that over 800 mem­bers of staff pur­chased shares in Bry­den fol­low­ing its ac­qui­si­tion by the Ja­maican com­pa­ny. This ac­count­ed for more than 50 per cent of staff.

He said, “List­ing pro­vides our em­ploy­ees and oth­er share­hold­ers with liq­uid­i­ty in their home mar­ket, al­though this list­ing by in­tro­duc­tion, does not in­volve the sale of new shares. It strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tions AS Bry­den’s to ac­cess the cap­i­tal mar­kets to sup­port our am­bi­tious growth plans.”

Cony­ers not­ed that the AS­BH stock did well on the Ja­maican stock ex­change when it was list­ed and he is hope­ful a sim­i­lar trend would oc­cur in Trinidad.

How­ev­er, the Bry­den ex­ec­u­tives not­ed there was cur­rent­ly more de­mand to buy the stocks than to sell, and there were very few stocks un­ac­count­ed for at this time.

Se­prod ac­quired AS Bry­dens for over $300 mil­lion in 2022. Ear­li­er this year, Se­prod ex­pand­ed its share­hold­ing in the com­pa­ny to 80 per cent.