PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Con­cern over lim­it­ed re­turns from sub­sidiary com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, took cen­tre stage at the Na­tion­al En­ter­prise Ltd (NEL) an­nu­al meet­ing of share­hold­ers yes­ter­day.

At the meet­ing, which was held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, NEL's gen­er­al man­ag­er Charles May­nard said the com­pa­ny record­ed an op­er­at­ing prof­it of $391 Mil­lion for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, an in­crease of 32 per cent from the pri­or 18-month pe­ri­od.

NEL record­ed an op­er­at­ing of $110.7 mil­lion for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2024, com­pared to $381.2 mil­lion in the same pe­ri­od of 2023.

Af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion, NEL share­hold­er Gookool Seemu­n­gal raised ques­tions about the sta­tus of en­er­gy com­pa­nies and as­sets un­der NEL in­clud­ing Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, TTNGL and At­lantic LNG.

"TTNGL is in a bad fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and, from my es­ti­ma­tion div­i­dends, from that com­pa­ny might be a long while in com­ing, maybe 10 years," said Seemu­n­gal, who al­so asked if there was any pos­si­bil­i­ty of LNG Train One gar­ner­ing any re­turns, fol­low­ing the re­struc­tured own­er­ship deal which was signed in De­cem­ber.

He al­so raised con­cern about re­turns from TSTT and its cur­rent man­age­ment, as he es­ti­mat­ed that the com­pa­ny may not con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant re­turns in five years.

In re­sponse, NEL chair In­grid Lash­ley said the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio was al­ways go­ing to face peaks and val­leys.

"More than 60 per cent of our in­vest­ments are now in the en­er­gy sec­tor and for that we are ex­posed to va­garies of that sec­tor. When it is high. it is high, when it's low it is very low. But at the same time we all recog­nise that it is a cy­cle and when it is high, it will go down and when it is down it will come up. That is why the in­vest­ment is a long-term in­vest­ment be­cause we man­age the flows over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time," said Lash­ley, who added fur­ther that NEL would al­so at­tempt to ob­tain as­sets to even out these fluc­tu­a­tions.

"It is al­so NEL's in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue look­ing for strate­gic as­sets that will help us to bal­ance out the div­i­dend in­come flows that we can ex­pect from the en­er­gy sec­tor and that will con­tin­ue go­ing for­ward," said Lash­ley.

Share­hold­er ac­tivist Pe­ter Per­me­ll said while he agreed with some of the con­cerns raised by Seemu­n­gal, he not­ed that NEL's pay­out to share­hold­ers, which yield­ed a 16 per cent in­crease, was a " cred­itable" per­for­mance.

How­ev­er he made an­oth­er sug­ges­tion, that NEL fol­low through with pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed plans to roll out quar­ter­ly pay­ments.

"The way for­ward seems to be fraught with chal­lenges, but the chal­lenges I be­lieve are not too ex­ten­sive to be over­come," said Per­me­ll, "I think you should move be­yond in­ten­tion and make that pol­i­cy even though we get a small­er div­i­dend. I think the share­hold­ers would be very hap­py to know they are get­ting a reg­u­lar div­i­dend, even though it is small­er."

He said this change would be ben­e­fi­cial to share­hold­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

NEL owns 51 per cent of Na­tion­al Flour Mills, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) and am­mo­nia pro­duc­er Trin­gen.

NEL, as well, owns 10 per cent of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tor Pow­er­Gen, At­lantic LNG and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids pro­duc­er Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd.

NEL's largest share­hold­ers are the Gov­ern­ment through Cor­po­ra­tion Sole with 66 per cent and whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, which owns 16.67 per cent.