Massy Holdings Ltd.

What it is

Massy is an investment holding company with three main portfolios — Integrated Retail, Gas Products, and Motors & Machines — and has been in operation since 1923, with businesses throughout the Caribbean basin as well as in Colombia and South Florida.

With over 60 operating companies across those portfolios, the Group is built to leverage scale and deliver growth across multiple industries simultaneously. Its retail arm — supermarkets, pharmacies, and distribution — is the single biggest revenue engine, while the gas and machinery divisions add industrial breadth.

Who owns it

Massy is a public company traded on the Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica Stock Exchanges, with no single controlling family or state entity identified in available sources. The top ten shareholders collectively control over 61% of the company, leaving a free float of roughly 39% — meaning the shareholder base is institutional-heavy but ownership percentages by individual holder are not publicly broken out in accessible filings.

Who runs it

Robert Riley is an Independent Non-Executive Director and was elected Chairman of the Board effective May 12, 2023. James McLetchie, formerly Group CFO, took over as Group President and CEO on October 1, 2025, when David Affonso retired.

Ivette Zuniga joined as Group Chief Financial Officer at the same time, bringing two decades of multinational finance experience. Affonso had himself served as CEO for just over a year, having replaced Gervase Warner, who announced an early retirement in April 2024 amid a governance review after 14 years in the role.

The money, in plain words

For the full year ended September 30, 2025, Massy brought in TT$15.83bn (US$2.35bn) in sales — a 3% rise on the prior year. Net profit for that year reached TT$777.6m (US$115.6m), a 9% improvement — about 4.9 cents of profit for every dollar of sales, a net profit margin of 4.9% (our calculation), typical for a high-volume, lower-margin conglomerate model.

For every dollar owners have put in, the business earns back roughly 9.6 cents a year — a return on equity of 9.6% (our calculation), modest but improving. Finance costs fell 12% year-on-year to TT$256.76m (US$38 mn), easing the cost of the debt taken on to fund the acquisitions of prior years.

Operating profit after finance costs rose 15% to TT$1.12bn (US$167 mn), the clearest sign that the underlying business — before one-off charges — is strengthening.

The stock trades at roughly 8.7 times earnings — a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.7x — inexpensive by global standards, reflecting both the Caribbean market discount and the recent leadership turbulence. The dividend has grown by an average of 5.4% per year over the past ten years, and Massy shifted to quarterly dividend payments from early 2025, a signal of growing cash confidence.

What it is doing now

A notice posted on the TTSE website confirmed McLetchie’s appointment from October 1; the board described the transition as a carefully structured succession process. McLetchie joined Massy in August 2023 as Group CFO; Ivette Zuniga is now stepping into the CFO role.

For the six months ended March 2025, revenue grew 3.9% to TT$7.9bn (US$1.2 bn) and profit after tax rose 20% to TT$365m (US$54 mn) — a meaningful acceleration before the leadership handover. The Group’s entry into the US market, with seven supermarkets in Jacksonville, Florida acquired in 2023, remains one of its most watched strategic bets.

What to watch

• New leadership execution: Massy described McLetchie’s appointment as following a “carefully structured succession process guided by the group’s successful business strategy and long-term ambitions.” Markets will test that language quickly.
• US expansion: The Jacksonville supermarket chain is Massy’s first move outside the Caribbean; whether it scales or strains the balance sheet is the central question for the next two years.
• Foreign exchange risk: Due to issues over foreign exchange availability, Massy ended US-dollar dividend payments for new foreign shareholders outside Trinidad, Barbados, and Jamaica. T&T’s managed FX regime is a structural constraint on hard-currency earnings.
• Guyana upside: Guyana’s real GDP growth was projected to exceed 40% in 2024, propelled by its expanding oil and gas industry — and Massy has operating businesses there across retail and gas products.

This is news, not investment advice.