AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $21.97 mil­lion for the first three months of its 2025 fi­nan­cial year, an in­crease of 17.25 per cent com­pared with the $18.75 mil­lion the group earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

The Trinidad-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny de­clared gross prof­it of $284.24 mil­lion for the three months end­ed March 31, 2025 64.8 per cent more than the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

The op­er­at­ing prof­it of the com­pa­ny, which fo­cuss­es on the im­por­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pre­mi­um bev­er­ages, food and gro­cery as well as hard­ware and house­wares, was $60.06 mil­lion for the pe­ri­od, a 31 per cent year-over-year im­prove­ment.

Bry­den record­ed rev­enue of $1.02 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to March 31, 2025, 62.6 per cent more than the $629.79 mil­lion the com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed in its 2024 first quar­ter.

Ja­maica’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion group, Se­prod, ac­quired 60 per cent of the share­hold­ing of AS Bry­den on June 1, 2022.

Com­ment­ing on the re­sults, Bry­den chair­man, Paul B Scott and CEO, Richard Pan­do­hie said the first quar­ter re­sults were pri­mar­i­ly im­pact­ed by the in­clu­sion of the fi­nan­cial of the sub­sidiaries which were ac­quired in 2024; Caribbean Pro­duc­ers (Ja­maica) (CPJ) and Stans­feld Scott Bar­ba­dos Ltd (SS­BL).

“The in­te­gra­tion of CPJ and SS­BL have gone well and now we are at the stage of iden­ti­fy­ing and ex­ec­u­tive syn­er­gies across the group,” said Scott and Pan­do­hie, who are al­so chair­man and CEO of Se­prod, re­spec­tive­ly.

On the Bry­den out­look, they said the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to ad­vance its agen­da of build­ing a re­gion­al plat­form that will un­lock val­ue for its part­ners, share­hold­ers and stake­hold­ers.

The Bry­den di­rec­tors said the com­pa­ny’s T&T busi­ness “con­tin­ues to face chal­lenges with ac­quir­ing suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change at the of­fi­cial ex­change rate. How­ev­er, we are hope­ful that the avail­abil­i­ty will im­prove.”

They said Bry­den is fo­cussing on in­creas­ing its ex­port busi­ness which will help to mit­i­gate the forex gap.

“We are pleased with our ex­port busi­ness, with Ja­maica and Guyana in par­tic­u­lar de­liv­er­ing very ro­bust growth across mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories,” said the Bry­den di­rec­tors.

For its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, AS Bry­den de­clared an af­ter-tax prof­it of $63.85 mil­lion, a de­cline of 54.3 per cent com­pared to $139.83 mil­lion in 2023.

The com­pa­ny is list­ed on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change.