An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

A fall in share prices on the lo­cal mar­ket and shifts by in­vestors to­wards high­er-yield­ing in­stru­ments have weighed on eq­ui­ty val­u­a­tions, even as Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go re­port­ed mixed fi­nan­cial re­sults.The is­sue of the de­clin­ing price of Sco­tia­bank’s stock was raised by a share­hold­er at the bank’s 56th an­nu­al meet­ing of share­hold­ers yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

“What con­cerns me as a share­hold­er is as of this morn­ing, we’re trad­ing at $45.50. I know that when I be­came in­ter­est­ed in this bank in 2023, I paid $69.97 for the share. It just dis­turbs me how the share con­tin­ues to fall be­cause I would have paid a fur­ther $70.50 in 2024. And then I be­came very con­cerned as that share price con­tin­ued to fall,” the share­hold­er told the meet­ing.

Sco­tia­bank’s chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, Re­shard Mo­hammed, ad­dressed the con­cern while pre­sent­ing the in­sti­tu­tion’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance to share­hold­ers and the board of di­rec­tors.

“I think all of us who are share­hold­ers share your con­cern about the de­clines in the share price,” said Mo­hammed, not­ing that in­vestors had been close­ly watch­ing the stock’s per­for­mance on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

He not­ed that the trend was not unique to Sco­tia­bank, point­ing to broad­er mar­ket dy­nam­ics af­fect­ing eq­ui­ties across the ex­change.

Over the past two years, val­u­a­tions across the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change have weak­ened, with many list­ed com­pa­nies ex­pe­ri­enc­ing de­clines be­tween 15 and 20 per cent.

Mar­ket con­di­tions, in­clud­ing move­ments in in­ter­est rates, have al­so in­flu­enced in­vestor be­hav­iour, en­cour­ag­ing some to move cap­i­tal away from eq­ui­ties and in­to al­ter­na­tive in­vest­ments of­fer­ing stronger near-term re­turns. Those wider dy­nam­ics, Mo­hammed ex­plained, have af­fect­ed pric­ing across mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies rather than a sin­gle in­sti­tu­tion.

Mo­hammed told share­hold­ers that man­age­ment re­mains fo­cussed on sus­tain­ing strong fi­nan­cial per­for­mance and de­liv­er­ing val­ue through div­i­dends and con­sis­tent earn­ings.

“We are try­ing or will be do­ing every­thing from a man­age­ment per­spec­tive to con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive re­sults as we have done in 2025,” he said.

He al­so high­light­ed the struc­ture of the bank’s share own­er­ship. The in­sti­tu­tion has 176,343,750 shares in is­sue, with 50.90 per cent of the shares be­ing held by Sco­tia­bank Caribbean Hold­ings Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of the T&T op­er­a­tion and 49.10 per cent held by oth­er in­vestors.

Less than two per cent of out­stand­ing shares change hands an­nu­al­ly, a fac­tor that can in­flu­ence price move­ments with­in the rel­a­tive­ly thin­ly trad­ed lo­cal mar­ket.

Sep­a­rate­ly, the board of di­rec­tors re­port­ed a de­cline in earn­ings in the fi­nan­cials for the first quar­ter of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, which were is­sued yes­ter­day.

Chair­man Derek Hud­son re­port­ed that the group re­alised prof­it af­ter tax of $161 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2026. That rep­re­sents a de­crease of about $6 mil­lion, or 3.57 per cent, com­pared with the same pe­ri­od last year.

To­tal rev­enue in the bank’s first quar­ter was $518.13 mil­lion, in­creas­ing by $24 mil­lion, or five per cent, dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

Growth came large­ly from an in­crease in net in­ter­est in­come of $7 mil­lion, or two per cent, along with a $17 mil­lion, or 16 per cent, rise in oth­er in­come.

Hud­son not­ed that rev­enue ex­pan­sion re­flect­ed con­tin­ued growth in core busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties across all seg­ments of the bank’s op­er­a­tions.

De­spite stronger rev­enue, high­er op­er­at­ing costs weighed on prof­itabil­i­ty. Non-in­ter­est ex­pens­es in­creased by $31 mil­lion, or 15 per cent, dur­ing the quar­ter.

Hud­son point­ed to planned tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments and the in­tro­duc­tion of a new as­set tax im­posed on fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions this year as key dri­vers be­hind the high­er cost base.

Those de­vel­op­ments af­fect­ed op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy. The group’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ra­tio moved to 46 per cent com­pared with 42 per cent dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in the pre­vi­ous year.

To­tal as­sets re­mained rel­a­tive­ly un­changed com­pared with the pri­or year, al­though port­fo­lio ad­just­ments oc­curred with­in the in­vest­ment book. Hud­son not­ed that the most sig­nif­i­cant move­ment in­volved re­al­lo­cat­ing hold­ings from Trea­sury bills in­to in­vest­ment se­cu­ri­ties.

Cus­tomer de­posits record­ed no­table growth dur­ing the pe­ri­od, in­creas­ing by $313 mil­lion com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year.
Hud­son de­scribed the ex­pan­sion in de­posits as a pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tor of con­sumer con­fi­dence in the bank’s sta­bil­i­ty and its com­pet­i­tive rate of­fer­ings across busi­ness seg­ments. Ef­forts to en­hance cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and main­tain at­trac­tive de­posit rates al­so con­tributed to the in­crease.

Look­ing ahead, Hud­son in­di­cat­ed that the group re­mains mind­ful of risks that could af­fect per­for­mance dur­ing the re­main­der of the year.

Po­ten­tial down­side fac­tors in­clude lo­cal eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, re­gion­al and glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal con­cerns, and the im­pact of new­ly an­nounced fis­cal mea­sures af­fect­ing the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor.

The board al­so con­firmed a div­i­dend pay­ment to share­hold­ers.

Di­rec­tors ap­proved a fi­nal div­i­dend of 70 cents per share payable to share­hold­ers on the reg­is­ter as of March 25, 2026. Pay­ment is sched­uled for April 14, 2026, match­ing the 70-cent div­i­dend dis­trib­uted dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025.