Prestige Profits

OUR love for eating out, and increasingly at fast foods restaurants, has resulted in  Prestige Holdings Limited recording both a 16 percent jump in group sales in 2004 to $456 million and a 50 per cent rise in profits attributable to shareholders, growing to an impressive $25 million. The clearly successful marketing strategies employed by Prestige Holdings have resulted in an excess of 60 million pieces of chicken being sold by KFC’s outlets  during 2004, or an average of 40-plus pieces of chicken consumed per resident national last year.  This meant that more than one million pieces of KFC chicken were sold each week to KFC customers, representing, according to the 2004 Annual Report of Prestige Holdings Limited, more than 20 percent of the processed birds market.

Meanwhile, as we ate the fried stuff,  Prestige Holdings  total Group assets saw a 14 percent increase to $247 million, and the debt to equity ratio enjoying an improved position, moving from 58:42 in 2003 to 56:44 by the end of the 2004 financial year. Buoyed by the continuing success of its franchised product, and the apparently almost endless ringing of KFC cash registers,  Prestige Holdings Limited, understandably confident of increased customer demand and a continued growth path, has negotiated an additional long-term debt of $72.3 million with its bankers, both to refinance the existing short-term debt of $57.5 million and for the funding of future expansion. A possible guide to any expansion can perhaps be seen in the Group’s adding seven restaurants in 2004 to its 65 in 2003.

The year, 2004, saw, inter alia, the refurbishing of two units and the relocating of two others to take advantage of demand, as well as to generate new customer interest. This has meant added opportunities of direct employment for short order cooks, waitresses, cashiers, clerks, purchasing staff, cleaners, security guards, supervisors, managers, drivers and loaders among others, and indirect employment for skilled workers in the construction industry. What Trinidad and Tobago is witnessing today is change in eating habits. Home-cooked meals are a rarity among office emloyees. Colonel Sanders would have been both pleased and pleasantly surprised, and interestingly, the market appears nowhere near saturation point.