After taking a major nosedive during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Catering and Ground Handling Division of Goddard Enterprises Limited (GEL) has been identified as a major contributor to the conglomerate’s bottom line in 2023.
GEL, a century-old company formed in Barbados but with a massive footprint across the Caribbean and the Americas, increased its profit from operations by nearly 25 per cent for the nine months ending June 30, 2023.
In the consolidated financial highlights which were recently published, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Ali and Chairman Charles Herbert outlined in their filing that its Caribbean Distribution Partners Ltd and the Catering and Ground Handling Division together contributed 62.5 per cent of GEL’s earnings per share.
“The Catering and Ground Handling Division recorded an increase in Revenues of 33.7 per cent as airline catering sales reached approximately 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels,” the two GEL representatives outlined.
Commenting on the performance of other divisions within the GEL group, the CEO and Chairman described the Auto Division’s operating profit as on par with the performance of the prior year. This despite sales falling as the division was “plagued with vehicle supply challenges for the first five months of the review period”.
Offering details on the Services Division’s performance, Ali and Herbert noted the “performance remained in line with expectations as sales exceeded the prior year by 14.6 per cent”.
They explained some $5.8 million was recovered from the liquidation of Mirexus Biotechnologies Inc. as this investment was previously fully written off.
“An increase in borrowings in the Catering and Ground Handling and Manufacturing Divisions to fund recent acquisitions and capital projects, and an increase in the interest rate of our United States dollar denominated loans resulted in an increase in finance costs of $6.4 million,” they said.
According to the senior GEL officials: “Included within other comprehensive income/loss is $20.7 million which represents the movement in our Hedging reserve from the end of the last financial year to the end of the current period ended 30 June 2023.
“The reserve represents the market value of open positions for forward contracts used by Ecuador Kakao Processing Proecuakao S.A to hedge against any volatility in the price of cocoa.”
At the same time, GEL gave the assurance that its balance sheet remains strong as all the ratios fell well within industry standards. (IMC1)
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