BEL is just finishing up a tough year of transition: it went from a company whose majority owner was a foreign company to a state owned and operated entity.
Since then, the utility has lowered rates, but yesterday at its annual general meeting, shareholders learned that it hasn't increased profits and it still isn't declaring a dividend.
Today, the company secretary explained that Keeping the Lights On was their priority for the past year:..
Dawn Sampson Nunez, Company Secretary
"Keeping the lights indeed has been a very important focus for BEL. It has and continues to be a very important focus for us since June of last year. You will recall that last year the company did project ruling power outages and it was mainly because of the cash flow challenges that the company had experience, it wasn't able to pay its power suppliers as well as the Public Utilities Commission - you will recall that the PUC had sent a letter to BEL threatening to cancel its license. As a result of the company not making payments due to payment that were due to the PUC."
"What was done following June; the change of ownership in June of last year. The focus of the management was to look at the company's operations and see where expenses could be reduced, look at the company's operations to see where we could make improvements in controlling our expenditure."
Jules Vasquez
"It would seem outwardly like a disappointing year. The overall earnings were down and the dividends, again none are being paid, so again no dividends for government, no dividend for Social Security which is the second largest shareholder."
Dawn Sampson Nunez, Company Secretary
"We've made about 1,9 - 2 million dollars in 2011. You will note that most of that were earn in the second half of the year. I think it amounted to about 1.6 million dollars that was earned in the second half of the year compared to $263,000 in the first half of the year. Those 1.6 million dollars that was earned in the second half of the year basically reflects the efforts of the company - the new management following June 2011 to improve performance."
"Now going forward, understandably they are looking forward to the company indeed declaring dividends in the future - that continues to remain an important focus for the company. We, though have to strike a healthy balance between making the shareholders desire for reasonable healthy returns on their investment and at the same time making sure that customers receive reasonable electricity rates. We had some accomplishments in that respect; we had the reduction of electricity rates effective 1st February 2012 and with respect to our earnings like I said that is something improving our overall financial performance is something that we will not lose sight of."
In 2011 BEL customs had an average frequency of power outages of 22.6 - sharply down from 37.6 the previous year, and the lowest it has been in five years.
Notably, the company can now access financing and free up some cash flow since the CDB has released it from a loan covenant - which was barring it from accessing commercial credit.
