The Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) Group yes­ter­day re­port­ed net in­come of $176 mil­lion for the first six months of its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, a 70.5 per cent in­crease com­pared with the $103.2 mil­lion the record­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to June 2024, the Clax­ton Bay-head­quar­tered ce­ment pro­duc­er gen­er­at­ed $1.18 bil­lion in rev­enue, which was 2.75 per cent more than the com­pa­ny’s for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2023.

This re­flect­ed in the com­pa­ny’s con­densed con­sol­i­dat­ed unau­dit­ed in­ter­im fi­nan­cial re­port for the six months end­ed June 30, 2024 which was post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change. The re­port was signed by TCL chair­man David In­gle­field and its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Fran­cis­co Aguilere Men­doza.

While TCL’s in­come for the first six months of its fi­nan­cial year in­di­cat­ed ro­bust growth, the re­gion­al ce­ment pro­duc­er re­port­ed in­come in its sec­ond quar­ter of $97.7 mil­lion, which was 6.8 per cent than the $104.9 mil­lion in the same quar­ter in 2023.

The fi­nan­cials al­so not­ed that the group’s ad­just­ed Earn­ings Be­fore In­ter­est, Tax­es, De­pre­ci­a­tion and Amor­ti­sa­tion (EBIT­DA) of $184 mil­lion in the sec­ond quar­ter re­flect­ed a de­crease of one per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od of the pre­vi­ous year, adding that this re­sult re­flect­ed the im­pact of in­creased costs across the group.

The state­ment al­so not­ed that the group’s ad­just­ed EBIT­DA on a year-to-date ba­sis for 2024 was $351 mil­lion, a 43 per cent in­crease com­pared to the pri­or year pe­ri­od.

“The 2024 op­er­at­ing re­sult in­cludes the ben­e­fit of re­struc­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, while the 2023 re­sult in­cludes ma­jor main­te­nance costs in­curred dur­ing the first quar­ter of the pri­or year.

“Through­out this year, the group has gen­er­at­ed ac­cu­mu­lat­ed net in­come of $176 mil­lion, a note­wor­thy in­crease of 70 per cent when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023,” the fi­nan­cials said. TCL in­creased its ce­ment prices by an av­er­age of 7.6 per cent in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

It added that dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2024, the TCL Group gen­er­at­ed net cash of $215 mil­lion from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and in­vest­ed $87 mil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and $132 mil­lion in short term in­ter­est-bear­ing de­posits.

On a year-to-date ba­sis, the TCL group gen­er­at­ed $341 mil­lion from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties due to im­proved work­ing cap­i­tal man­age­ment.

On its sus­tain­abil­i­ty plan the com­pa­ny not­ed, “In Trinidad and To­ba­go, our tri­als are con­tin­u­ing for the use of waste oil as an al­ter­na­tive fu­el by year end at our Clax­ton Bay

ce­ment plant, while we are al­so work­ing to achieve fur­ther ex­cel­lence with co­pro­cess­ing. Our team has ex­e­cut­ed coastal clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties which saw the re­moval of 553 kilo­grams of waste from Scot­land Bay.

“A most no­table ac­com­plish­ment has al­so been our use of al­ter­na­tive raw ma­te­ri­als in the man­u­fac­ture of our prod­ucts to re­duce our CO2 foot­print. TCL has al­so con­tributed

to the use of high non-fresh­wa­ter con­sump­tion across the group by us­ing the com­pa­ny’s ponds at its Mayo quar­ry to cap­ture rain­wa­ter,” the com­pa­ny said.

Re­gard­ing its out­look the com­pa­ny said it will re­main fo­cused on its key strate­gic pri­or­i­ties of health and safe­ty, cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty, in­no­va­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and EBIT­DA growth aimed at the cre­ation of val­ue for all stake­hold­ers.

“We are con­fi­dent about main­tain­ing our strong share of the Cari­com mar­ket, sup­port­ed by ex­cel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice and val­ue propo­si­tions for our cus­tomers, and we re­main well po­si­tioned to cre­ate and de­vel­op growth op­por­tu­ni­ties. Con­se­quent­ly, our re­cent ini­tia­tives in­clud­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of our call cen­tre in T&T (fol­lowed by Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, and Guyana), and the open­ing of more Con­stru­ra­ma stores in T&T,” said TCL.

“No­tably, phase one of our ex­pan­sion pro­gramme in Ja­maica which is de­signed to in­crease Caribbean Ce­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd’s pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty by up to 30 per cent is card­ed for com­ple­tion by ear­ly 2025 and will bol­ster the na­tion­al ce­ment sup­ply as well as cater to oth­er re­gion­al mar­kets,” it added.

Mex­i­can build­ing prod­ucts man­u­fac­tur­er, Ce­mex, owns 69.83 per cent of TCL, through a hold­ing com­pa­ny called Sier­ra Trad­ing.