GHL’S $1B PROFIT

Guardian Holdings Limited which has been a corporate front runner since the 1990s has become, on the basis of its earnings in 2003, the first company listed on the Trinidad and Tobago exchange to declare profits in excess of TT$1 billion (US$169.9 million) in a single financial year. What must be considered remarkable is that Guardian Holdings, whose investments embrace the Caribbean, has been able to achieve what must be regarded as a significant milestone in an age of globalisation and at a time when several leading North American and European corporate players are in a virtual shares value see-saw.

And despite the jostling for Caribbean markets by a number of United States companies, coupled with a whittling down of the US market share for Caricom small manufactures and agricultural products since 2000, and aggravated by September 11, 2001, Guardian Holdings, along with several other indigenous TT companies, has shown a distinctive growth curve. In the past six years the value of a GHL share has more than doubled from its January 1, 1998 level of $15.50 to $32.11 on Thursday (March 18). And as at December 31, 2003 shareholders’ equity had increased by 122 percent over that of year end, 2002, rising to $2,601 million, while the Group’s assets expanded by 58 percent to TT$11.6 billion (US$1,863 million). In addition, GHL’s strategic alliance with RBTT Financial Holdings forged in August of 1995, in which the two financial majors bought 20 percent of each other’s shareholding, and the net gains of $195 million from the sale last year of part of its stake in RBTT, were contributory factors in GHL’s crossing of the billion-dollar divide.

The statement by Guardian Holdings’ Chairman, Mr Nazir Ahamad, that the Group’s earnings per share in 2003 had been $2.22, up from $1.21 of the corresponding period, an increase of $1.01 or 83 percent, and that non-recurrent items had generated an additional increase in shareholder value of $4.03 per share was a Music Festival in itself. The Group’s policy of making investments throughout the Caribbean, including the insurance portfolios of Crown Eagle Life, Dyoll Life, Jamaica Mutual Life and Horizon Life, all in Jamaica; the Crown Life portfolios, including those in Aruba and Curacao, and yet others through subsidiaries, had contributed to its bottom line. And instead of the traditional North-South investments, Guardian Holdings, along with other Trinidad and Tobago as well as Jamaica and Barbados corporate players, ushered in the strategic and profitable shift to South-South investment. Meanwhile, the establishment of the clearly long overdue Caribbean Single Market and Economy, hopefully within a year, is expected to further stimulate GHL economic activity, along with that of other players, and contribute further not merely to earnings per share of GHL investors, but to the creation of more jobs and the development of Caricom.