PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

New in­vestors are not just wel­comed, but are be­ing en­cour­aged to be a part of the Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (IPO) for West In­di­an Traders Ltd.

WITL, a Fast-Mov­ing Con­sumer Goods (FM­CG) whole­sale dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny based in San Juan, Trinidad and To­ba­go, opened the IPO on May 18, 2025, with 5,062,500 or­di­nary shares on of­fer at a price of $2.00 per share.

This of­fer­ing, ac­cord­ing to the IPO's prospec­tus, con­sists of 2,700,000 new­ly is­sued shares and 2,362,500 ex­ist­ing shares sold by SL Hold­ings Ltd, which is owned by Sharon and Lind­say Gillette, the lat­ter who is cur­rent­ly chair­man of the WITL board.

WITL is hop­ing to raise ap­prox­i­mate­ly $9.4 mil­lion in the IPO, which it in­tends to utilise with­in one month of the of­fer.

The com­pa­ny ex­plained that the IPO pro­ceeds will be used to strength­en WIT’s bal­ance sheet; re­pay ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$4.62 mil­lion in debt; cov­er of­fer ex­pens­es; fund growth ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing a state-of-the-art ware­house in El So­cor­ro and ex­pan­sion in­to chilled and frozen goods.

In a da­ta sheet on the IPO, WITL said it was aimed at con­tin­u­ing the com­pa­ny's growth and ex­pan­sion, which has been de­scribed as con­stant since it be­gan as "a one-van con­fec­tionery op­er­a­tion in­to a mod­ern Fast Mov­ing Con­sumer Goods (FM­CG) dis­trib­u­tor serv­ing su­per­mar­kets, hos­pi­tals, ho­tels, restau­rants, and over 4,000 re­tail cus­tomers na­tion­wide."

The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly dis­trib­utes a broad port­fo­lio of recog­nised brands, in­clud­ing Twist Juices, Daisy Oil, As­ton­ish, Hy­per Malt, Fes­ti­val Cook­ies, Poco Lo­co Wraps, Ducales Crack­ers, OKF Aloe Drinks, El­van Choco­lates, Nestlé prod­ucts in To­ba­go, Hin­du Teas and more."

The com­pa­ny was ac­quired by the Gillette fam­i­ly in 2021

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of West In­di­an Traders Jake Gillette, said the com­pa­ny con­sid­ered go­ing pub­lic for some time.

"Two years ago, is when we first had the idea about it, " said Gillette in a phone in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, "When we start­ed to look at our own sto­ry in­ter­nal­ly, and the growth sto­ry of how we've been per­form­ing over­all as a com­pa­ny, as well as cou­pling that with the tax in­cen­tives of the SME, and all the ben­e­fits. As we start­ed to talk more about it at the board lev­el, we re­alised it was the best time for the com­pa­ny to do an IPO now, with every­thing lin­ing up."

He con­tin­ued, "Be­tween the growth, the SME tax in­cen­tive and al­so the staff en­gage­ment we have, in terms of hav­ing the staff want­i­ng to buy in as well, at this stage of our growth and de­vel­op­ment as a com­pa­ny."

Gillette said the com­pa­ny was mind­ful of the TTSE’s re­cent per­for­mance, but ul­ti­mate­ly felt re­ports of de­clin­ing stocks on the TTSE were not tru­ly re­flec­tive of the re­turns avail­able.

"It's def­i­nite­ly on our mind. I would say I see our com­pa­nies on our stock ex­change are per­form­ing in a very strong way. I look at the over­all bal­ance sheets of prof­itabil­i­ty of the com­pa­nies. I think the stock mar­ket just tends to be a re­flec­tion of the con­fi­dence in the cur­rent econ­o­my, I sup­pose," said Gillette, who stressed that the com­pa­ny was al­so at­tempt­ing to bring new in­vestors to the mar­ket.

He said, "But what has tra­di­tion­al­ly hap­pened, I think, on our stock ex­change is that large por­tions of the stock are owned by main­ly in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors. So we're hop­ing that we can get some more re­tail in­vestors on board as first-time in­vestors to be able to pur­chase in­to this IPO. A re­tail in­vestor, mean­ing like every­day peo­ple just put some sav­ings (in stocks) in­stead of just hav­ing sav­ings in a bank ac­count, look­ing to in­vest in a com­pa­ny that's es­tab­lished for 30 years, in our case."

Prof­its falls in '25

In the prospec­tus, WITL record­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $2.33 mil­lion in its 2025 fi­nan­cial year, which was 23.54 per cent less than the $3.05 mil­lion earned in 2024.

Gillette said the dip was par­tial­ly due to ex­pan­sion work done in To­ba­go.

“One is we did go in­to new cat­e­gories of chan­nels that had a low­er prof­itabil­i­ty or low­er mar­gins from from last year. So as a part of the growth that we had in in­creas­ing the rev­enue was us go­ing in­to some low­er mar­gin style items that were high­er vol­ume, low­er mar­gin,” he said.

“Then two is we ex­pand­ed our ware­hous­ing in To­ba­go, so we spent a de­cent amount of mon­ey on the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture on our ware­hous­ing hous­ing fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go to bring it up to a high­er stan­dard. So, it's a com­bi­na­tion of two things.”

He added that while the com­pa­ny did see some chal­lenges for for­eign ex­change, it was not se­vere­ly af­fect­ed due to it high vol­ume of lo­cal­ly pur­chased prod­ucts.

“It has def­i­nite­ly been a chal­lenge. We have dif­fer­ent sources for for­eign ex­change, we deal with most of the ma­jor banks. We al­so deal with Ex­im­Bank for cer­tain prod­ucts, but we get our ad­e­quate share of forex to buy prod­ucts that we need. We are, I would say, a small­er dis­trib­u­tor com­pared to the larg­er dis­trib­u­tors, so we do get our ad­e­quate amounts, our fair share,” he said.

“We do have a de­cent port­fo­lio of lo­cal­ly paid-for goods, like the Nes­tle port­fo­lio or Twist prod­ucts, so we do have a de­cent mix of lo­cal or Tri­ni cur­ren­cy-de­nom­i­nat­ed prod­ucts, I should say.”

So far, the re­sponse to the IPO has been en­cour­ag­ing, ac­cord­ing to Mar­li Creese, CEO of NCB Mer­chant Bank.

NCB Mer­chant Bank is the lead bro­ker, arranger, and un­der­writer for the IPO.

Creese said, "We're see­ing plen­ty of sub­scrip­tions from in­di­vid­ual in­vestors who have al­ready in­vest­ed be­fore, and there's noth­ing wrong with that. These are peo­ple who al­ready have bro­ker­age ac­counts and al­ready have ac­counts with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cen­tral De­pos­i­to­ry. First-time in­vestors are a class of in­vestors that we hold very near and dear to our hearts. So we would like to see more of are first-time in­vestors who are mak­ing their first in­vest­ment on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change."

He added, "The re­cep­tion so far has been great. Most of our mar­ket­ing ef­forts have been tar­get­ed to­wards try­ing to get more in­di­vid­ual in­vestors in­to the IPO, be­cause while in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors are fan­tas­tic, it is the in­di­vid­ual in­vestors who re­al­ly pro­vide that liq­uid­i­ty."

He agreed that it was im­por­tant to bring new in­vestors to boost the mar­ket.

"To have a vi­brant mar­ket, you need to have high par­tic­i­pa­tion rates among in­di­vid­ual in­vestors, so while the feed­back has been great, we want to en­cour­age as many in­di­vid­ual in­vestors as pos­si­ble to ap­ply. We re­al­ly think it could be trans­for­ma­tive for them to give them an al­ter­na­tive to oth­er in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties," Creese said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Gillette said the IPO would give lo­cal in­vestors the op­por­tu­ni­ty to own shares in a strong lo­cal com­pa­ny, as he urged them to fol­low the ex­am­ple set by T&T's Caribbean neigh­bour, Ja­maica.

"It's a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in brands you know and al­ready pick up off the shelves. So it is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to quote un­quote own the brands you love, be­cause you can see the shelves, you can see all the shelves every day. Our brands are those you can see on the shelves now. You see what we're of­fer­ing as an IPO, see how many brands we of­fer. So it's a very good op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in an es­tab­lished com­pa­ny that's been around for 30 years with a lot of his­to­ry, a long track record of prof­itabil­i­ty, and a very strong cus­tomer base and prod­uct port­fo­lio," he said.

He said a good ex­am­ple of own­er­ship is ac­tu­al­ly Ja­maica's Stock Ex­change, where their small and medi­um stock ex­change, has cre­at­ed a lot of wealth and val­ue in the econ­o­my.

"We're hop­ing that as more com­pa­nies like ours list with strong bal­ance sheets and strong prof­itabil­i­ty, it could en­cour­age peo­ple more and more to in­vest di­rect­ly in com­pa­nies."

To fa­cil­i­tate po­ten­tial new in­vestors, the com­pa­ny host­ed a live we­bi­nar on Fri­day, where de­tails of the IPO were ex­plained to po­ten­tial in­vestors. Gillette said about 250 peo­ple at­tend­ed the event.

WITL would be­come the fifth SME to be list­ed on the TTSE.

In Box:

Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) list­ed on the TTSE SME Mar­ket ben­e­fit from:

- A 10-year tax in­cen­tive.

- First 5 Years: A 100 per cent tax hol­i­day on Cor­po­ra­tion Tax, Busi­ness Levy, and Green Fund Levy.

- Next 5 Years: A 50 per cent re­duc­tion on Cor­po­ra­tion Tax, Busi­ness Levy, and Green Fund Levy.

- Ac­cess to eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing; no oblig­a­tion to pay debt; no col­lat­er­al re­quire­ments

-In­creased brand vis­i­bil­i­ty, en­hanced rep­u­ta­tion, and trans­paren­cy of the busi­ness

-Price dis­cov­ery: Es­tab­lish­es a mar­ket val­ue and elim­i­nates the un­cer­tain­ty for de­ter­min­ing share val­ue

-ESOP in­cen­tives: Shares can be of­fered as per­for­mance in­cen­tive to em­ploy­ees

-Rais­ing cap­i­tal through Ad­di­tion­al Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (APO)

Source: Min­istry of Fi­nance