An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) says in­vestor con­fi­dence is strength­en­ing and trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty is gath­er­ing pace as it wel­comed West In­di­an Traders as the fifth com­pa­ny to list on its Small and Medi­um En­ter­prise (SME) Mar­ket.

The whole­sale dis­tri­b­u­tion and fast-mov­ing con­sumer goods com­pa­ny of­fi­cial­ly joined the ex­change yes­ter­day af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing an Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (IPO) of 5,062,500 or­di­nary shares at an of­fer price of $2 each.

The list­ing broad­ens the range of com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ed on the SME Mar­ket while pro­vid­ing in­vestors with an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in a lo­cal­ly owned busi­ness.

Speak­ing af­ter the list­ing cer­e­mo­ny, yes­ter­day, TTSE CEO Eva Mitchell said the new list­ing demon­strates that the ex­change’s ef­forts to at­tract more com­pa­nies and in­vestors are be­gin­ning to bear fruit.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about a de­cline in mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty in re­cent years, Mitchell said the ex­change has fo­cused on cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies to raise cap­i­tal while en­cour­ag­ing greater in­vestor par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“The list­ing to­day is re­al­ly tes­ti­mo­ny of what we’re do­ing. The ex­change is a place where we ba­si­cal­ly pro­vide a plat­form for com­pa­nies to raise mon­ey and then we pro­vide that same plat­form for in­vestors to par­take in the growth of that com­pa­ny.”

She said trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty has in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to last year, while re­tail in­vestor par­tic­i­pa­tion has al­so strength­ened.

“The ex­change fo­cus has re­al­ly been on tap­ping in­to that re­tail in­vestor pool, bring­ing more of those in­vestors in­to the stock mar­ket and get­ting the ac­tiv­i­ty from that par­tic­u­lar pool. List­ings will do that. Hav­ing an ef­fi­cient plat­form will do that, and al­so en­sur­ing that ac­tiv­i­ty hap­pens in a reg­u­lat­ed man­ner will bring that con­fi­dence back in­to the mar­ket.”

Mitchell not­ed the ex­change has al­ready record­ed five list­ings, up from an av­er­age of just one list­ing an­nu­al­ly over the pre­vi­ous three years.

“We hope to see more be­fore the end of the year. So far we have five. It’s been one list­ing for the last three years, and hope­ful­ly this mo­men­tum will con­tin­ue well in­to the years ahead.”

She in­di­cat­ed that while in­vestor con­fi­dence is still de­vel­op­ing, mar­ket in­di­ca­tors point in the right di­rec­tion.

“If you’re see­ing more peo­ple open­ing ac­counts, that means con­fi­dence is grow­ing. If you’re see­ing more prod­ucts com­ing on­to the mar­ket, that means ef­fec­tive­ly there is con­fi­dence in the plat­form that we pro­vide.”

West In­di­an Traders Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jake Gillette said the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to list fol­lowed near­ly two years of plan­ning af­ter watch­ing the suc­cess of an­oth­er SME list­ing.

“This is about two years in the mak­ing. About two years ago, when we saw the So­lis list­ing, we start­ed to ex­plore it. This was the in­spi­ra­tion that we ex­plored and kept go­ing.”

Gillette said one of the com­pa­ny’s key ob­jec­tives is to give em­ploy­ees and oth­er stake­hold­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to share in its fu­ture growth.

“Our hopes are to give our em­ploy­ees first off, and our stake­hold­ers, a stake in the com­pa­ny. Al­low them to par­tic­i­pate in the growth jour­ney with us.”

He en­cour­aged oth­er fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness­es to con­sid­er the SME mar­ket, say­ing the process was less chal­leng­ing than many per­ceive.

“There are a lot of ben­e­fits to it. There’s the SME tax in­cen­tive and a lot of rea­sons to list. I think a lot of fam­i­ly com­pa­nies don’t want to list right now for what­ev­er rea­son, but it’s not as daunt­ing as you prob­a­bly think it is.”

The TTSE al­so re­port­ed con­tin­ued im­prove­ment in over­all mar­ket per­for­mance dur­ing 2026. To­tal mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion has risen from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $91.9 bil­lion in Jan­u­ary to $100.7 bil­lion, an in­crease of $8.8 bil­lion or 9.6 per cent.