Cig­a­rette-man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co), yes­ter­day re­port­ed rev­enue of $83.08 mil­lion for the three months end­ed March 31, 2025, an 11.3 per cent in­crease over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2024.

In her re­view of the com­pa­ny’s first-quar­ter 2025 unau­dit­ed, in­ter­im re­sults, Wit­co chair In­grid Lash­ley linked the dou­ble-dig­it rise in rev­enue to the launch of Vuse, de­scribed as a pre­mi­um va­p­ing prod­uct, one year ago.

Lash­ley said with the launch of Vuse, the com­pa­ny has “moved to a mul­ti-cat­e­go­ry port­fo­lio and will con­tin­ue to ex­plore and max­imise op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­no­va­tion and port­fo­lio growth that will en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the busi­ness.”

The Wit­co chair said while the com­pa­ny ac­knowl­edges an over­all de­cline in sales in the do­mes­tic mar­ket, it is “en­cour­aged by some im­prove­ment in the pre­mi­um seg­ment and in­creas­es in the ex­port mar­kets.”

The com­pa­ny’s af­ter-tax prof­it for the pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary 1 to March 31, 2025 to­talled $14.69 mil­lion, a 9 per cent in­crease com­pared to the prof­it of $13.48 mil­lion in the first quar­ter of its 2024 year.

The com­pa­ny said it is mind­ful of the un­cer­tain­ty and volatil­i­ty of the 2025 en­vi­ron­ment and mar­kets, an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to the im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs on im­ports by the US ad­min­is­tra­tion.

As a re­sult of the un­cer­tain­ty and volatil­i­ty, the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed to de­fer the con­sid­er­a­tion of its div­i­dend for the first quar­ter.

The Wit­co stock went ex-div­i­dend on Fri­day and the com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ers will re­ceive a fi­nal div­i­dend of $0.32 on May 29.

The com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ers re­ceived a fi­nal div­i­dend of $0.52 per share last May.

Wit­co’s au­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it for those years was $277.08 mil­lion for the 12 months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023 and $177.61 mil­lion in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

The com­pa­ny’s largest share­hold­er is the British Amer­i­can To­bac­co (In­vest­ments) with a 50.13 per cent stake. The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board is the com­pa­ny’s sec­ond largest share­hold­er with 9.01 per cent.