Mouttet: Forex woes, rising costs weigh on Prestige earnings

In­creased sales did lit­tle to off­set for­eign ex­change chal­lenges and ris­ing labour costs faced by Pres­tige Hold­ings in the first quar­ter of 2026, lead­ing to a de­cline in the com­pa­ny’s prof­its.

In its fi­nan­cial state­ments re­leased yes­ter­day, the restau­rant man­age­ment com­pa­ny re­port­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $9.4 mil­lion for the pe­ri­od, down from $15.7 mil­lion record­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

Pres­tige chair­man, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, not­ed that group sales in­creased by four per cent to $356 mil­lion from $343 mil­lion, but prof­it be­fore tax de­clined by 38 per cent to $14.2 mil­lion from $22.8 mil­lion when com­pared with the pri­or year.

How­ev­er, he said for­eign ex­change chal­lenges sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the com­pa­ny’s re­turns.

He ex­plained, “Whilst our sales dur­ing the Quar­ter con­tin­ued to demon­strate the strength of our brands, prof­itabil­i­ty was ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed due to three key events. First­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant for­eign ex­change loss oc­curred dur­ing the Quar­ter due to the high cost of ob­tain­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy in or­der to make crit­i­cal, and long over­due, pay­ments to for­eign sup­pli­ers.”

“Our for­eign payables have grown over time due to the se­vere lack of US Dol­lars in Trinidad and To­ba­go and this sit­u­a­tion put the sup­ply of for­eign in­puts to our com­pa­ny at sub­stan­tial risk. A de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­duce this bal­ance by ac­cess­ing al­ter­na­tive cur­ren­cies and cur­ren­cy swaps at rates that were much high­er than our in­puts were orig­i­nal­ly cost­ed.”

Mout­tet al­so not­ed that the com­pa­ny ab­sorbed high­er costs due to ad­just­ments in Na­tion­al In­sur­ance pay­ments, as well as ex­ter­nal fac­tors af­fect­ing its in­puts.

“We ex­pe­ri­enced an in­crease in labour costs dur­ing the Quar­ter fol­low­ing the near­ly 23 per cent in­crease in Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions in Jan­u­ary 2026. As a sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with over 3,300 peo­ple em­ployed, the in­crease in Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions had a sig­nif­i­cant ad­verse im­pact.

“Last­ly, the high­er for­eign ex­change costs and in­creased labour costs men­tioned above al­so im­pact­ed many of the lo­cal busi­ness­es that pro­vide prod­ucts and ser­vices to Pres­tige Hold­ings, and in­creas­es were passed on to us dur­ing the Quar­ter, im­pact­ing our in­put and op­er­at­ing costs,” Mout­tet said.

The Pres­tige chair­man, how­ev­er, said a num­ber of ini­tia­tives have been im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress these high­er costs, in­clud­ing seek­ing sup­ply chain al­ter­na­tives, menu ad­just­ments, and ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ments.