By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
February 4, 2022
Performance Indices one week after.
It has been one week since Trinidad and Tobago based conglomerate, Massy Group cross listed on Jamaica Stock Exchange. The move saw the group come in at its 98.97 million shares priced at $2,463.08 per share. Massy’s market capitalization is $243.77 billion, making it the largest cross-listed company and the second largest company listed on JSE’s Exchange.
The cross listing is the second Trinidad and Tobago based company to do so in the last year, after Guardian Holdings Limited cross-listed through the NCB Financial Group which has a market capitalisation of JA $315.42 billion in May 2021.
In January Massy Holdings held its annual general meeting in a hybrid format at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre in Port of Spain, when its Chief Executive Officer, Gervase Warner, explained the company’s interest in deepening its reach in Jamaica. It comes after Massy Gas Products (Jamaica) Limited announced in September that it was looking to expand operations for the storage and distribution of medical oxygen.
Warner in a promotional video with Barita Investments ahead of the debut on the JSE, expressed hopes for what the cross listing would do for the investor market in Jamaica being a high growth company with a history of being well governed and a share that is diversified and exposure to different country risks. He described the JSE as having a different investor climate, with greater interest in a company like Massy, one he says provides exciting growth opportunities with strong dividends and with a company he says is doing good in the world. Warner was quick to point out how the Jamaican equity market will serve to fuel Massy’s growth ambitions over the next five years.
Gervase was asked recently at the AGM as to whether his company’s listing in Jamaica was due to the need for foreign exchange, as the notion that forex could be extracted easier from Jamaica compared to Trinidad and Tobago at the moment. Warner quickly denied this, adding “its listing was an opportunity for the company to enjoy the benefit of a broader shareholding group, while the idea of extracting capital from Jamaica would be difficult to pull off. He said to do this “would require a significant number of shareholders to sell in Jamaica and then convert that to hard currency and take it out. We have a great deal of shareholders, with the company’s performance, who are holding on to their shares. In fact, one of the challenges we think we are going to have with this cross-listing is getting more shares to be listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange.”
So far, Gervase has expressed the cross listing as optimistic for Caribbean Integration with hopes the JSE and the TTSE will work closer together and eventually the process that has been started right here in Jamaica, to integrate the market, with the realization that laws become harmonized and there is one platform to list Caribbean companies to allow us to become ‘a force to be reckoned with’.