Gen­er­al man­ag­er of Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) Charles May­nard says he is en­cour­aged by the im­proved per­for­mance of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 31, 2023, when the com­pa­ny de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $95.2 mil­lion (US$14 mil­lion).

How­ev­er, he could not say when NEL, which is the ma­jor­i­ty 51 per cent own­er of TSTT, would reap re­wards of TSTT’s prof­itabil­i­ty.

May­nard made the com­ments to Guardian Me­dia Ltd when asked when would NEL ben­e­fit from its share­hold­ing in TSTT.

“In our last two an­nu­al re­ports, we dis­cussed how TSTT is chart­ing a path to prof­itabil­i­ty and part of that was cost con­tain­ment, re­struc­tur­ing of their em­ploy­ee head count and they have done that over the past two years.

“So much so that re­cent­ly it was an­nounced that TSTT is con­sid­er­ing a $6 mil­lion bonus for em­ploy­ees. This means that TSTT is set­ting the bench­marks nec­es­sary and com­ing back to prof­itabil­i­ty. When would NEL see that? I can’t say but I do know that we have our eval­u­a­tion process that we go though an­nu­al­ly and I do know that I am en­cour­aged by the progress and the bench­marks of TSTT,” May­nard ex­plained.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the launch of the new NEL web­site, which took place at the Brix Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, May­nard al­so com­ment­ed on whether NEL was con­sid­er­ing to pay its div­i­dends in US cur­ren­cy.

“That is al­ways a pop­u­lar ques­tion and it al­ways comes up es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing what I call the an­nu­al meet­ing sea­son, how­ev­er, the sim­ple an­swer re­mains that this is not a NEL de­ci­sion to make ... the Cen­tral Bank re­al­ly has the ju­ris­dic­tion over for­eign ex­change,” he said.

Re­gard­ing whether NEL is ex­pect­ed to be a share­hold­er in the re­struc­tured At­lantic LNG, May­nard said that was “above his pay grade.”

On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he would be trav­el­ling to Lon­don next month to sign off on the agree­ment for the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG. That agree­ment will con­sol­i­date the own­er­ship of At­lantic un­der one com­pa­ny.

Con­tribut­ing to the 2024 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Row­ley said the sign­ing will be the cul­mi­na­tion of “... an out­stand­ing pe­ri­od of work for which I want to con­grat­u­late the En­er­gy Min­is­ter, his ad­vis­ers, the lawyers, ex­perts, our lo­cal and for­eign le­gal teams who have ne­go­ti­at­ed with those in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies and out of it has come im­proved arrange­ments for the peo­ple”.

NEL’s chair In­grid Lash­ley, who gave re­marks about the com­pa­ny’s new web­site, said with the ad­vent of its new in­ter­net face, in­for­ma­tion on the ma­jor­i­ty State-owned in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny would be read­i­ly avail­able in a for­mat that will pro­vide com­plete knowl­edge of its op­er­a­tions and its fi­nan­cial and op­er­at­ing da­ta.

“One of the pos­i­tives of our COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ence is the new meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­ter­ac­tion that it has brought to the fore. We will not be left out,” Lashe­ly said.

She al­so com­ment­ed on the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance as it closed off its fi­nan­cial year 2023.

“As of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, this fi­nan­cial year-end, our share price was $3.55. We have de­clared two in­ter­im div­i­dend pay­ments to­talling $0.26 per share to 5,452 share­hold­ers, a to­tal of $335.7 mil­lion. Our high­est share price in the fi­nan­cial year was $4.15 per share, record­ed on Ju­ly 17, 2023.

“NEL is among the top ten shares based on div­i­dend yield on the T&T Stock Ex­change,” she added.

(Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo)