AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings yes­ter­day re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $63.8 mil­lion for its 2024 fi­nan­cial year. That was 54.3 per cent less than the $139.8 mil­lion in prof­it af­ter tax in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

The drop in the com­pa­ny’s prof­itabil­i­ty oc­curred de­spite rev­enue in­creas­ing by 32 per cent for the group in 2024 to $3.385 bil­lion com­pared to 2023 fig­ure of $2.563 bil­lion.

The re­port not­ed that there were two sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness com­bi­na­tions which im­pact­ed the group’s per­for­mance. This in­clud­ed the Ju­ly 2024 ac­qui­si­tion of Caribbean Pro­duc­ers (Ja­maica) (CPJ) and the group’s ac­qui­si­tion of a con­trol­ling stake of 75 per cent in Re­tail Ac­qui­si­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd (RACL).

The re­port not­ed the CPJ ac­qui­si­tion re­sult­ed in the recog­ni­tion of good­will of $81.9 mil­lion and in­tan­gi­ble as­sets com­pris­ing cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships, trade name and brand as­sets in the amount of $95.0 mil­lion, while the RACL deal amount­ed to $66 mil­lion com­pris­ing cash, shares and con­vert­ible promis­so­ry notes.

A ma­jor­i­ty per­cent­age of AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings is owned by the Ja­maican man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, Se­prod.

Two weeks ago, Se­prod sub­mit­ted a le­gal no­tice to share­hold­ers of AS Bry­dens & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) to dis­close its plans to ac­quire 79.99 per cent of the com­pa­ny. In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment, Se­prod said the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the com­pa­ny and AS Bry­den is in­tend­ed to al­low prin­ci­pals and cus­tomers to ben­e­fit from a re­gion­al­ly in­te­grat­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form.

The le­gal no­tice stat­ed that since be­ing ini­tial­ly ac­quired by Se­prod, AS Bry­den has ex­pand­ed its pre­mi­um bev­er­age dis­tri­b­u­tion foot­print to in­clude Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, and St Lu­cia.

Se­prod said it will con­tin­ue to dri­ve the pen­e­tra­tion and ex­pan­sion of its prod­ucts in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

The le­gal no­tice out­lined that since Se­prod ac­quired AS­BH shares in 2022, the lead­er­ship of the com­pa­ny has tak­en an ac­tive role in the man­age­ment of the com­pa­ny.

Se­prod said it in­tends to con­tin­ue this ac­tive role sub­se­quent to its pur­chase of the ad­di­tion­al AS­BH shares to achieve greater in­te­gra­tion and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

Se­prod’s in­volve­ment in­cludes mon­i­tor­ing and pro­vid­ing feed­back and mea­sur­ing the per­for­mance of AS­BH’s op­er­a­tions, and cor­po­rate strat­e­gy, fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, cap­i­tal in­vest­ments, liq­uid­i­ty plan­ning and man­age­ment.

The le­gal no­tice said the of­fer pe­ri­od is due to close at 3:00 pm on June 05, 2025.

The le­gal no­tice went to state that at the clos­ing date, all reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals re­quired by the of­fer­or in re­spect of the ac­qui­si­tion of the AS­BH shares have been ob­tained by the Of­fer­or with­out any con­di­tions or re­stric­tions be­ing at­tached which in the opin­ion of the Of­fer­or are con­sid­ered to be un­de­sir­able or un­du­ly oner­ous.

“No gov­ern­ment or gov­ern­men­tal supra­na­tion­al, trade agency, reg­u­la­to­ry body, any court or oth­er per­son hav­ing in­sti­tut­ed or threat­ened any ac­tion, suit or in­ves­ti­ga­tion or en­act­ed or made any statute or reg­u­la­tion or or­der or de­ci­sion that might in the opin­ion of the Of­fer­or,” the no­tice out­lined.

For the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, Se­prod had unau­dit­ed rev­enues of J$133.0 bil­lion and net prof­it of J$4.1 bil­lion. (US$1 =J$157.68)

Se­prod not­ed that in March 2025, EY (Ja­maica) was en­gaged by it to de­ter­mine the fair mar­ket val­ue of AS­BH in con­sid­er­a­tion of the of­fer, us­ing on­ly pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion in ac­cor­dance with Se­prod’s in­struc­tions.