Cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co) has re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $79.7 mil­lion for the first six months of its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, a 22 per cent de­cline com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

The com­pa­ny, which man­u­fac­tures cig­a­rettes for the do­mes­tic and re­gion­al mar­kets, record­ed rev­enue of $255.4 mil­lion for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2024 to June 30, 2024. That was 16 per cent less than the $306.9 mil­lion it gen­er­at­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

In the re­view of the re­view of the re­sults, Wit­co's chair In­grid Lash­ley, said in re­view­ing the sec­ond quar­ter per­for­mance of 2024, it is not­ed that the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue re­flect­ed a one per cent de­cline com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023.  

“The pri­ma­ry con­trib­u­tor was a 25 per cent or $9.3 mil­lion de­cline in ex­port rev­enue, par­tial­ly off­set by an im­prove­ment of 6 per cent or $8 mil­lion in the do­mes­tic mar­ket,” she said. 

Lash­ley not­ed, as a re­sult, the year-to-date per­for­mance has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­enced by the car­ry­over ef­fect of first-quar­ter per­for­mance, which Wit­co could not ful­ly off­set by the close of the fi­nan­cial Half-Year.  

“While we ac­knowl­edge the hur­dles faced dur­ing the quar­ter, we are ac­tive­ly re­assess­ing our strate­gies to ad­dress these is­sues and are fo­cused on im­ple­ment­ing the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments to im­prove our per­for­mance go­ing for­ward,” she stat­ed. 

“In the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, we launched our glob­al­ly renowned va­p­ing brand, Vuse, and ven­tured in­to the va­por cat­e­go­ry. This aligns with our strate­gic goal of pro­vid­ing adult con­sumers with less harm­ful al­ter­na­tives to smok­ing. This prod­uct range was de­vel­oped in di­rect re­sponse to cus­tomer needs, and its per­for­mance to date has been promis­ing,” the chair de­tailed. 

The di­rec­tors have rec­om­mend­ed an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.20 per or­di­nary share, which will be paid on Au­gust 26 to share­hold­ers of record at the close of busi­ness on Au­gust 7. Wit­co added that the reg­is­ter of share­hold­ers will be closed on Au­gust 8 and 9, 2024 to process trans­fers. 

Last month, Wit­co an­nounced that its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Raoul Glynn, had been placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive with pay ef­fec­tive June 24, 2024, pend­ing an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The to­bac­co man­u­fac­tur­er said Hi­ram Muril­lo was ap­point­ed as the act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pe­ri­od. 

Glob­al to­bac­co man­u­fac­tur­er, British Amer­i­can To­bac­co group, is the par­ent com­pa­ny of Wit­co, own­ing 50.13 per cent of the Champs Fleur-based com­pa­ny.