Massy Group CEO, David Af­fon­so, says the com­pa­ny is look­ing to ex­pand its re­tail and dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness in the south­ern US and then in Guyana.

In an in­ter­view last Thurs­day, in the group’s new ex­ec­u­tive suite at In­vaders Bay in Port-of-Spain, Af­fon­so said Massy is ac­tive­ly look­ing to add to its su­per­mar­kets in the US.

In De­cem­ber 2022, Massy closed the US$47 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of the gro­cery store chain, Rowe’s IGA Su­per­mar­ket, which has sev­en stores in Jack­sonville, Flori­da.

Apart from the Rowe’s ac­qui­si­tion, Massy spent US$24.5 mil­lion to ac­quire a ware­house in Jack­sonville, Flori­da in Oc­to­ber 2023. The ware­house Massy pur­chased is 172,136 square feet and is lo­cat­ed in the Ime­son In­ter­na­tion­al In­dus­tri­al Park in North Jack­sonville.

Af­fon­so said Massy is eye­ing, in a dis­ci­plined way, a num­ber of su­per­mar­kets in south­ern US states for pos­si­ble ac­qui­si­tion. The T&T group, which op­er­ates through­out the re­gion, in Colom­bia and in the US, has de­fined ex­act­ly what it is look­ing for in terms of the de­mo­graph­ic, the kinds of neigh­bour­hoods it wants to be in, even the cus­tomers it is ac­cus­tomed to serv­ing.

“And so, we’re not buy­ing any­thing that comes up. We are buy­ing on­ly if it’s ex­act­ly what we need. So we looked at about nine op­tions last year or so. We did not find any­thing there, but we are ac­tive­ly look­ing at a num­ber of them now,” said Af­fon­so.

Massy’s US seg­ment gen­er­at­ed $622.01 mil­lion in third-par­ty rev­enue dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025. That was 7.84 per cent of the group’s third-par­ty rev­enue of $7.92 bil­lion for the first six months of its 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

The con­tri­bu­tion of the US op­er­a­tions to Massy’s prof­it be­fore tax for the six-month pe­ri­od was $20.22 mil­lion, 3.63 per cent of the $556.68 mil­lion to­tal for the pe­ri­od.

With re­gard to pos­si­ble ac­qui­si­tions of su­per­mar­kets in Guyana, Af­fon­so af­firmed that the group is look­ing to add to the stores it has in South Amer­i­can mem­ber of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.

“We have been part of Guyana for the last 60 years. We have sup­port­ed the growth of Guyana through­out and we will con­tin­ue to do so. We have six stores there now, and we think there’s lots of op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow with Guyana as she grows. And cer­tain­ly our team in Guyana, 1,300 peo­ple in Guyana, across the group, all Guyanese, and we will con­tin­ue to work with them as we grow there,” said Af­fon­so.

In terms of third-par­ty rev­enue, Guyana was the third largest con­trib­u­tor for Massy dur­ing its half year, gen­er­at­ing $1.07 bil­lion or 13.6 per cent of the group’s $7.92 bil­lion.

Of the $556.68 mil­lion in prof­it be­fore tax for the six-month pe­ri­od, the T&T mar­ket was the largest con­trib­u­tor with $217.48 mil­lion, ac­count­ing for 39.06 per cent of the group’s prof­it. Guyana was in sec­ond place, earn­ing $169.79 mil­lion and ac­count­ing for 30.50 per cent of the group’s prof­it be­fore tax..

In the six months to March 31, 2025, Massy’s in­te­grat­ed re­tail and dis­tri­b­u­tion port­fo­lio gen­er­at­ed $5.04 bil­lion, ac­count­ing for 63.7 per cent of the group’s third-par­ty rev­enue of $7.92 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for the pe­ri­od.

The group’s sec­ond largest third-par­ty rev­enue gen­er­a­tor for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, was its mo­tors and ma­chines port­fo­lio, which con­tributed 21.97 per cent of Massy’s sales, or $1.74 bil­lion.

Af­fon­so said the Massy group is look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of op­por­tunis­tic ex­pan­sions in the su­per­mar­ket space in Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia.

The group is, as well, at­tempt­ing to tight­en its port­fo­lio man­age­ment, with its CEO point­ing to the sale of its in-store phar­ma­cies to Su­per­Pharm for $22 mil­lion. That trans­ac­tion was an­nounced in Au­gust last year. Su­per­Pharm is part of T&T’s pub­licly list­ed Agos­ti­ni group.

The need for more fo­cussed port­fo­lio man­age­ment was al­so re­spon­si­ble for Massy’s de­ci­sion to sell 100 per cent of its share­hold­ing in Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica), a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and con­sumer prod­ucts dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny. The pur­chas­er of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica) is Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners Ltd, which is 50 per cent owned by Agos­ti­ni and 50 per cent by the God­dard’s Group in Bar­ba­dos. The con­sum­ma­tion of that trans­ac­tion is pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval.

“As we look with­in our port­fo­lio of com­pa­nies, we ask our­selves: are we the best own­ers of this or not? And can we take that mon­ey and de­ploy it some­where else and do a lot more with it, in a much more fo­cussed man­ner?” Af­fon­so ques­tioned.

Mo­tors and ma­chines

The Massy CEO said the group is al­so seek­ing to re­fo­cus its new ve­hi­cle of­fer­ings, as he sees the need to re­cap­ture some ve­hi­cle mar­ket share in T&T.

“We’ve had a lot of changes in the Trinidad mar­ket. There are a lot of what we call ze­ro-mileage, roll on, roll off ve­hi­cles for sale here. Those deal­ers have a dif­fer­ent struc­ture. They don’t have to have a fan­cy show­room, so they run un­der a whole dif­fer­ent cost struc­ture. And they’re do­ing a whole kind of pack­age deal and say­ing once you’re mak­ing $6,000 a month, you could own this.

“And so we are look­ing at how we pack­age our of­fer­ings. Now we’ve changed our line-up a bit, so we will again...We are po­si­tion­ing our­selves to re­spond to that, al­beit a lit­tle late, but we po­si­tion our­selves to get to re­spond to that. So there’s op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­vis­it the busi­ness mod­el and make sure that we po­si­tion our­selves so that we can com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly in this mar­ket,” Af­fon­so said.

He said the Guyana mar­ket for new cars is ex­pand­ing rapid­ly, lead­ing Massy to add sev­er­al new deal­er­ships to its of­fer­ings there. The T&T group is sell­ing more ve­hi­cles in Colom­bia as the econ­o­my there has turned around, with Massy back to sell­ing 700 ve­hi­cles a month.

Asked how many ve­hi­cles Massy sells in T&T, Af­fon­so said, “Be­tween 2,600 and 3,000 a year and in Colom­bia it is about 9,000 a year.”

Massy deputy CEO James McLetchie said the group is try­ing to in­crease its sale of ve­hi­cles in T&T to 3,600 a year.

Asked to out­line the ex­tent to which the am­bi­tion of in­creas­ing car sales in T&T is linked to the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my, Af­fon­so said, “It is, to an ex­tent. But I guess the au­to­mo­tive busi­ness re­sponse to that is you change your mod­el line­up a bit. So if you look at the roads in Trinidad, you’ll see some small­er cars are get­ting more pop­u­lar, be­cause that’s what will fit peo­ple’s pock­ets. So we have to adapt and maybe bring in few­er Volvos and more Nis­san Notes or more MGs or more, what­ev­er.”

Forex

The Massy CEO said about 65 per cent of the group’s rev­enue is earned from non-T&T sub­sidiaries, which pay in US dol­lars.

“It’s hard cur­ren­cy to this ex­tent: when that busi­ness pays div­i­dends back to the par­ent, it’s in US dol­lars. If we do busi­ness in Saint Lu­cia, when we de­clare div­i­dends and do so back to the par­ent it’s paid, not in EC dol­lars, it is paid in US dol­lars. So far, from a Trinidad point of view, it’s a hard cur­ren­cy busi­ness.

“In oth­er words, peo­ple tend to re­fer to hard cur­ren­cy as US dol­lars on­ly. But while it may be earned in EC dol­lars or Ja­maican dol­lars, when div­i­dends come back, it’s hard cur­ren­cy to us, but the trade is done in the lo­cal cur­ren­cy.”

If 65 per cent of Massy’s rev­enue is in non-T&T dol­lars, is Massy net pos­i­tive with re­gard to for­eign cur­ren­cies?

Af­fon­so said, “The div­i­dends com­ing back to T&T are still not suf­fi­cient to meet our for­eign ex­change needs. Not yet. That’s why we are push­ing the hard-cur­ren­cy in­vest­ments. To be­come a net pos­i­tive gen­er­a­tor of US dol­lars would cer­tain­ly be our goal.”