Thursday, May 29 2008

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Lawrence Duprey...

CL Financial executive chairman Lawrence Duprey is predicting a turnaround in the fortunes of spirits group, Angostura Holdings Ltd in spite of its net loss of $137 million in 2007.

Duprey, addressing shareholders at Angostura’s annual general meeting at the House of Angostura, Laventille, said financial negotiations were taking place to build the Angostura brand in the global market.

He told the shareholders that “in the next three years you would not imagine how valuable this company will be.”

He said Angostura, a subsidiary of the CL Financial Group, should be the most valuable company on the TT Stock Exchange since it was the only company that had a brand that was already global. He said Angostura was also being restructured to facilitate its global marketing thrust, with the appointment of new directors and the re-shifting of organisational positions.

Angostura’s gross turnover increased marginally by $1 million to $818 million, while its net loss amounted to $137 million last year.

Angostura’s chief accountant Michael Carballo, who has been recently appointed as group finance director of CL Financial, said Angostura’s core spirits business for 2007 reflected an increase of 16 percent or approximately $103 million, as a result of an increase in sales locally and abroad.

However, he said that the $137 million loss, as opposed to the $171 million profit from the preceding year, was largely due to the disposal of Angostura’s investment in Belvedere SA, a Paris listed vodka, whiskey and wine group. He said CL Financial’s holding in Belvedere SA was 68.4 percent, and included Angostura’s shareholding of 35 percent, which had been reduced from 51 per cent in 2006. He said the total asset base for the group has therefore been lowered to $3.2 billion from $3.5 billion. As a result, total declared dividends for 2007, according to the annual report, amounted to five cents per share, consistent with that of 2006.

Carballo reassured that the disposal of Belvedere SA had turned out to be beneficial to shareholders as retaining it could have resulted in significant losses to them.

He said the disposal should also reduce the level of future borrowing by the company and he was optimistic that the report for 2008 would be much better.

Carballo said local volumes were showing significant increases over the last few years, while exports were also promising.

He said global inflation also presented a challenge and had impacted on the cost of molasses, glass, and packaging materials. Even so, Angostura still continued to be cost effective, said Carballo. Angostura, he said, was planning to expand globally and was targeting regions such as the United States, the Far East, Canada and Africa.