Hop­ing to fol­low on from its suc­cess on the Ja­maican Stock Ex­change, two Fri­days ago AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) was of­fi­cial­ly list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE).

The AS Bry­den Group has a rich lega­cy of suc­cess since it was found­ed more than 100 years ago in 1923.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­vestor prospec­tus shared pri­or to the Au­gust 29 list­ing, “To­day, the group is one of the largest con­sumer goods com­pa­nies in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. The group has a team of over 2,500 per­sons and rev­enues of $3,385,997,000 (ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$500 mil­lion), based on its De­cem­ber 31, 2024 fi­nan­cial year end.”

The prospec­tus not­ed, “Pri­or to the com­pa­ny’s shares be­ing list­ing on the JSE, it was one of the largest pri­vate­ly-owned com­pa­nies in Trinidad and To­ba­go by rev­enue. More re­cent­ly, the Group has ex­pand­ed its op­er­a­tions to Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Ja­maica. In June 2022, the Group be­came a mem­ber of (Ja­maica's) Se­prod group of com­pa­nies.”

Bry­den’s list­ing on the TTSE was not­ed to be unique by TTSE CEO Eva Mitchell, as the com­pa­ny had list­ed by in­tro­duc­tion rather than an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing.

“What makes to­day even more mean­ing­ful is that, as Bry­den is list­ing by in­tro­duc­tion. Un­like a typ­i­cal IPO, this list­ing by in­tro­duc­tion was not in­tend­ed to raise cap­i­tal, but rather, it pro­vides ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers of Bry­den with the abil­i­ty to trade their shares. In fact, over 800 share­hold­ers now have ac­cess to liq­uid­i­ty on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, and this path­way opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty of at­tract­ing new share­hold­ers to the com­pa­ny,” Mitchell said at the list­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

AS­BH’s or­di­nary shares and its US-dol­lar pref­er­ence shares were pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change in No­vem­ber 2023.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the list­ing cer­e­mo­ny AS Bry­den di­rec­tor Nicholas Scott con­firmed that the com­pa­ny was not ex­pect­ing many shares to be sold. He said 800 mem­bers of staff pur­chased shares in Bry­den fol­low­ing its ac­qui­si­tion by Se­prod. How­ev­er, he did note the shares were in high de­mand and the list­ing pro­vid­ed a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­sale of shares.

This view was shared by the gen­er­al man­ag­er of JMMB In­vest­ments, Je­re­my Lal­la, when asked about the po­ten­tial of the new list­ing last week.

“AS Bry­den’s (AS­BH) en­try on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE), done by way of list­ing by in­tro­duc­tion, is a strate­gic move that po­si­tions the com­pa­ny as a tru­ly re­gion­al play­er. While I do ex­pect trad­ing vol­umes to be mut­ed in the ear­ly days, large­ly be­cause many share­hold­ers are still in the process of de­ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing pa­per cer­tifi­cates, the list­ing cre­ates long-term val­ue by un­lock­ing liq­uid­i­ty for ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers and lay­ing the ground­work for fu­ture cap­i­tal-rais­ing on the TTSE,” Lal­la told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian via email.

“In Bry­den’s case, the TTSE list­ing is less about im­me­di­ate trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty and more about sig­nalling con­fi­dence in its long-term growth tra­jec­to­ry. It strength­ens the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al foot­print, gives em­ploy­ees and ear­ly share­hold­ers an av­enue to re­al­ize val­ue, and po­si­tions the group for op­tion­al fu­ture of­fer­ings. AS­BH demon­strates strong fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, dri­ven by growth in var­i­ous di­vi­sions, in­clud­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and in­dus­tri­al sup­ply,” Lal­la ex­plained.

“This was de­spite fac­ing chal­lenges such as for­eign cur­ren­cy, sup­ply is­sues and ris­ing prices on fin­ished goods. AS­BH’s re­gion­al ex­pan­sion and forex liq­uid­i­ty im­prove­ments of­fer long-term ben­e­fits, but el­e­vat­ed debt, in­te­gra­tion risks, and liq­uid­i­ty con­straints lim­it near-term up­side. Nonethe­less and over time, as more shares are de­ma­te­ri­al­ized and liq­uid­i­ty im­proves, the cross-list­ing should help un­lock the full ben­e­fits that have been ob­served in oth­er emerg­ing mar­kets.”

He em­pha­sised that the cross-list­ing of the stock made it par­tic­u­lar­ly vi­able for in­vestors across the re­gion.

He said, “It goes with­out say­ing that the ben­e­fits of cross-list­ing be­tween the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change (JSE) and TTSE are clear. It broad­ens the in­vestor base, en­hances price dis­cov­ery, and can ul­ti­mate­ly re­duce the cost of cap­i­tal. Cross-list­ed com­pa­nies of­ten en­joy greater vis­i­bil­i­ty, stronger gov­er­nance per­cep­tions, and im­proved val­u­a­tion mul­ti­ples. For mar­kets like Trinidad & To­ba­go and Ja­maica, these list­ings deep­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, cre­ate ar­bi­trage (this is where most in­vestor find val­ue) and ef­fi­cien­cy op­por­tu­ni­ties, and raise the pro­file of both ex­changes.”

For its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, AS­BH de­clared au­dit­ed $63.85 mil­lion (US$9.45 mil­lion) in prof­it af­ter tax, a 54.3 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $139.83 mil­lion in group earned in 2023.

For the six months end­ed June 30, 2025, the group’s unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it was US$5.98 mil­lion ($40.3 mil­lion), a 25.8 per cent in­crease over the pri­or year.