The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (WIT­CO) saw its prof­its take a hit for the nine months end­ed 30 Sep­tem­ber 2025, with prof­it be­fore tax falling 46 per cent to $82.9 mil­lion, down $70 mil­lion from the same pe­ri­od last year.

The cig­a­rette-man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny’s net prof­it dropped 44 per cent to $60.9 mil­lion, as it grap­pled with shift­ing con­sumer habits and the on­go­ing im­pact of il­lic­it trade.

Rev­enue came in at $332 mil­lion, mark­ing a 13 per cent year-on-year de­cline.

Chair In­grid Lash­ley said the com­pa­ny re­spond­ed with tar­get­ed port­fo­lio tweaks, in­clud­ing the re­launch of Du Mau­ri­er and a re­fresh of Roth­man’s Clas­sics, aimed at re­gain­ing mar­ket share and align­ing with evolv­ing con­sumer tastes.

De­spite the down­turn, Lash­ley point­ed to 31 per cent growth in Q3 over Q2 2025 in both do­mes­tic and ex­port mar­kets, call­ing it a sign of re­silience and strate­gic trac­tion.

“We’re see­ing en­cour­ag­ing sig­nals,” she said, “and re­main fo­cused on long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

Op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies and tighter cost con­trols helped cush­ion the blow, and the board has de­clared an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.10 per share, payable on No­vem­ber 28, 2025, to share­hold­ers on record as of No­vem­ber 11. The reg­is­ter will be closed on 12 and 13 No­vem­ber for pro­cess­ing.

Dur­ing the bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, an­nounced a 100 per cent in­crease in the ex­cise du­ty on all cig­a­rettes.

Tan­coo re­ferred to high­er cus­toms du­ties on rum and spir­its, beer and to­bac­co prod­ucts, stat­ing that the du­ties on cig­a­rettes would dou­ble from $5.26 to $10.52 per pack of 20.

The of­fi­cial Gazette of the in­crease refers to an ex­cise du­ty, which is a tax im­posed on lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods, while a cus­toms du­ty is im­posed on im­port­ed goods.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia last week, Wit­co’s head of cor­po­rate and reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs, Ger­von Abra­ham, said the Champs Fleurs-based com­pa­ny ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment of T&T’s an­nounce­ment of the dou­bling of ex­cise du­ty on to­bac­co prod­ucts, as out­lined in the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get.

“As a long­stand­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er with over a cen­tu­ry of her­itage, Wit­co sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er fis­cal and eco­nom­ic ob­jec­tives,” the cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er said. “How­ev­er, the mag­ni­tude of this ex­cise ad­just­ment does present chal­lenges to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the le­git­i­mate to­bac­co in­dus­try and the hun­dreds of liveli­hoods it sup­ports.”