For the first quar­ter end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) record­ed a net prof­it of $203 mil­lion ver­sus $33 mil­lion for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2021.

This con­tin­ued strong per­for­mance is dri­ven by a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in div­i­dend in­come of $201 mil­lion com­pared to $2.8 mil­lion in the com­par­a­tive quar­ter of 2022, and a 90 per cent in­crease in in­vest­ment in­come of $2.3 mil­lion from $1.2 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous year’s com­par­a­tive, chair­man In­grid Lash­ley said in the con­densed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to the NEL, pre­vail­ing glob­al am­mo­nia prices en­abled im­proved re­sults from the Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Ltd (Trin­gen), yield­ing a per­sis­tent and fore­see­able flow of div­i­dends to NEL for this fi­nan­cial year.

This has re­sult­ed in NEL’s net cash po­si­tion hav­ing grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly quar­ter over quar­ter, in­creas­ing 167 per cent to $350 mil­lion in the first quar­ter of the fi­nan­cial year 2023 from $131 mil­lion at the end of the last quar­ter of the pre­vi­ous 18-month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022.

Look­ing ahead Lash­ley said, “As we con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in an eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment that is evolv­ing from eco­nom­ic and mar­ket un­cer­tain­ty, we re­main fo­cused on seiz­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties for op­ti­mis­ing re­turns for our share­hold­ers.

“For this, the Board will con­sid­er quar­ter­ly div­i­dends to share­hold­ers for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, as in­flows per­mit.”