TransJamaican expects more fallout after losses in March quarter
Published:Friday | May 15, 2020 | 12:16 AM
TOLL ROAD operator TransJamaican Highway Limited, TJH, experienced losses in the March quarter, continuing the trajectory from last year, and is anticipating even more fallout in business due to the impacts of the pandemic on travel and commute.
The company said in its first earnings report since listing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange that it started seeing a decline in traffic numbers since March 13, when schools were ordered closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
“In light of this, we anticipate that this impact on our traffic will continue into the next fiscal quarter, but it is not possible at this stage to establish new objectives,” the company said.
TJH said it would continue to monitor the traffic and put measures in place to review cost across its operations in order to minimise the financial impact of this pandemic.
Efforts at further comment on what those measures would entail were unsuccessful up to press time. The National Road and Constructing Company, NROCC, also referred requests for comment back to TJH.
NROCC holds the largest block of shares in TJH amounting to 20 per cent of the company, or 2.5 billion units, followed by entities connected to NCB Financial Group, with combined holdings of 2.4 billion units, and Jamaica Money Market Brokers Limited, with 6.1 per cent, or 763.6 million units.
NCB Capital was the lead arranger of the TransJamaican IPO, and also acted as the co-broker along with JMMB Securities.
TransJamaican Highway, in a statement from Managing Director Thierry Parizot, said many uncertainties loom, including the time frame to contain the pandemic and any additional measures required by the authorities to stem its spread.
It portends further losses for the company that in the March quarter bled US$1.5 million, compared to profit of US$1.58 million for the comparative March 2019 period.
“This decrease resulted primarily from increases in operating expenses, administrative expenses and finance costs,” the company said in its earnings report for the first quarter.
For the current quarter, while the toll road operator was in the red on its pretax earnings, it reported net profit of US$2.27 million due to tax credits. Similarly, for the full year in 2019 – its fiscal period ends in December – TJH had pretax losses of US$13.14 million, but reported a profit of US$8.3 million after offsetting the losses with tax credits.
Revenue for the quarter remained largely flat at US$12.9 million compared to US$12.7 million for the same period in 2019, for which TJH blamed “measures implemented by the Government of Jamaica in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic”.
TransJamaican holds total assets of US$329 million, including US$8.8 million in cash, and has a net worth of US$67.8 million.