BICO Limited

What it is

BICO Limited is incorporated under the laws of Barbados, and its core business is the distribution of ice cream and the rental of cold storage space. The company traces its origins to 1890, making it one of the oldest commercial enterprises on the island.

Its registered office sits at Harbour Industrial Park, St. Michael, Barbados — the main industrial belt just outside Bridgetown.

The company is, in practice, Barbados’s dominant local ice-cream brand, selling into supermarkets, food-service outlets, and hotels, while also earning steady income by renting out refrigerated warehouse space to third parties.

Who owns it

According to the company’s share register, no director holds a direct stake; the following directors hold indirect interests: Mrs Alwyne M. Horsley is the beneficial owner of Nordev One Ltd and Nordev Two Ltd, and Mr F.

Edwin Thirlwell is the beneficial owner of Windsong Investments Ltd. Other named shareholders in the register include Sagicor investment funds and Bajan Vending Inc.

The company has approximately 350 registered shareholders. The precise percentage stakes held by any single party are not disclosed in publicly available sources; the ownership structure is a tight circle of local Barbadian investors with no foreign or state controlling shareholder.

Who runs it

The board is chaired by F. Edwin Thirlwell, CIM, who serves as Executive Chairman; other directors include Alwyne M.

Horsley, Lionel A. Moe (FCCA), and the company secretary is Centralis (Barbados) Ltd. Thirlwell, described as long-serving executive chairman, is the public face of the company and has been its primary spokesperson on results and strategy.

On the finance side, the accounts are managed by Orlando Ward (ACCA), serving as the company’s accountant, and audited by M.E. Murrell & Co., Chartered Accountants.

There is no separately titled CFO disclosed in available sources.

The money, in plain words

For the six months ended 31 March 2024, BICO’s trading revenue was BBD $7.59m (USD $3.80m), fractionally ahead of the BBD $7.58m recorded in the same period a year earlier — effectively zero growth in nominal terms. Operating income for that half-year fell from BBD $765,762 to BBD $614,218, a near-20% drop in what the business actually earns from running operations — a sign that costs are rising faster than prices.

For the full financial year ended 30 September 2023, the company made a net profit of BBD $479,000 (USD $239,500), recovering from a loss in the prior year that was entirely due to an impairment charge relating to a fall in the value of investments and a deficit in the company’s pension plan. On an estimated full-year revenue of roughly BBD $15m (our calculation, doubling the two comparable half-year figures), that implies a net profit margin of approximately 3.2% — thin, but positive after two loss-making years.

No dividend has been paid to shareholders since at least FY2022.

What it is doing now

The most significant recent corporate event was a blocked takeover: Barbados’s Fair Trading Commission (FTC) rejected a move that would have allowed Trinidad-based HADCO Ltd — parent of Creamery Novelties Ltd — to absorb BICO’s operations, ruling that the consolidation would have resulted in a “substantial lessening of competition.” Thirlwell criticised the ruling, arguing the decision was “not in the best interest of consumers, employees or the 350 BICO shareholders who were denied the opportunity to sell their shares at the attractive price offered.”

Directors fixed March 20, 2026 as the record date for the 2026 Annual General Meeting, held on April 21, 2026. No material strategic announcement accompanied that meeting in the sources available.

The company continues to operate as an independent, Barbados-focused business.

What to watch

• FY2024 full-year results (year ended 30 September 2024): the half-year already showed margin pressure from weak sales growth and rising input costs — the full year will show whether that worsened.
• Takeover landscape: the FTC blocked HADCO once; Caribbean consolidation in the food-and-cold-chain sector has not stopped, and a revised or alternative bid cannot be ruled out.
• Pension plan: the defined-benefit pension has swung between asset and deficit in recent years; any further deterioration would hit reported profit directly.
• Dividend resumption: no dividend has been paid since at least FY2022; a return to dividends — or continued suspension — will signal management’s confidence in cash generation.
• Cold storage growth: demand for refrigerated warehousing in Barbados has been described as increasing; this lower-volatility revenue stream could become a larger share of earnings.

This is news, not investment advice.