AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings Ltd re­port­ed a sharp de­cline in prof­itabil­i­ty for the first half of 2026, as weak­er de­mand in key Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness seg­ments and a slow re­cov­ery in Ja­maica’s tourism sec­tor weighed on earn­ings, de­spite the com­pa­ny’s ef­forts to strength­en its bal­ance sheet and im­prove cash gen­er­a­tion.

The re­gion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion and con­sumer goods con­glom­er­ate record­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of US$278,000 for the six months end­ed June 30, 2026, down from US$5.98 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

“Gross prof­it stood at US$78.1 mil­lion (H1 2025: US$84.2 mil­lion) and op­er­at­ing prof­it at US$9.7 mil­lion (H1 2025: US$17.4 mil­lion),” the com­pa­ny added.

Sec­ond-quar­ter re­sults al­so re­flect­ed the chal­leng­ing op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“Rev­enue closed at US$139.8 mil­lion (Q2 2025: US$150.0 mil­lion), gen­er­at­ing net prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers of US$0.3 mil­lion (Q2 2025: US$2.6 mil­lion),” Bry­den stat­ed.

In its in­ter­im re­port, the com­pa­ny said per­for­mance dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter was af­fect­ed by soft­er de­mand in its pre­mi­um bev­er­ages and in­dus­tri­al equip­ment busi­ness­es in T&T, as well as a pro­longed re­cov­ery pe­ri­od in Ja­maica’s tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try. Nev­er­the­less, man­age­ment said it con­tin­ues to dri­ve growth through lead­ing brands in its core con­sumer cat­e­gories across sev­er­al re­gion­al mar­kets.

De­spite the earn­ings de­cline, the group high­light­ed sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in cash flow and debt re­duc­tion. Man­age­ment re­port­ed that ef­forts to op­ti­mise work­ing cap­i­tal gen­er­at­ed US$12.63 mil­lion in net op­er­at­ing cash flow dur­ing the first six months of 2026, com­pared with just US$0.78 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. The com­pa­ny de­scribed the re­sult as a 16-fold in­crease in cash gen­er­a­tion.

The stronger cash po­si­tion en­abled the group to re­duce its debt lev­els. To­tal bor­row­ings fell to US$200.5 mil­lion from US$224 mil­lion in the first half of 2025.

The com­pa­ny said the debt re­duc­tion, cou­pled with dis­ci­plined cost con­trols and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies, has strength­ened its fi­nan­cial foun­da­tion, low­ered risk and im­proved long-term re­turns on cap­i­tal.

It said ear­ly signs of sta­bil­i­sa­tion were ev­i­dent dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter as tar­get­ed ac­tions and strate­gic ini­tia­tives be­gan to de­liv­er re­sults, adding that Bry­den’s is con­tin­u­ing to in­vest in brand ex­pan­sion and ge­o­graph­ic growth across the re­gion while pur­su­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies through cen­tralised ware­hous­ing projects in T&T, Guyana and Bar­ba­dos.

It is al­so es­tab­lish­ing re­gion­al cen­tres of ex­cel­lence aimed at im­prov­ing ex­e­cu­tion speed, in­creas­ing op­er­at­ing mar­gins and stan­dar­d­is­ing busi­ness process­es.