LJ Williams Ltd says it ex­pects im­proved per­for­mance in fis­cal 2027, af­ter a chal­leng­ing year in which group sales and prof­its de­clined, large­ly due to weak­er re­sults at its sub­sidiary, The Home Store.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed March 31, 2026, the group re­port­ed a loss of $2.27 mil­lion for the 12-month pe­ri­od, com­pared to a loss of $2.86 mil­lion for the pre­vi­ous year. Group sales fell eight per cent to $147.7 mil­lion from the pre­vi­ous year.

Chair­man Law­ford Dupres said the low­er per­for­mance was pri­mar­i­ly at­trib­ut­able to re­duced sales and prof­itabil­i­ty at The Home Store.

In his re­view of the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance, Dupres not­ed that the food and al­lied di­vi­sion record­ed high­er sales com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year.

How­ev­er, in­creased pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty com­pressed mar­gins and af­fect­ed prof­itabil­i­ty.

De­spite this, he de­scribed the di­vi­sion as re­silient in what re­mains a dif­fi­cult trad­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

The hard­ware di­vi­sion al­so faced chal­lenges amid what the com­pa­ny de­scribed as a stag­nant con­struc­tion sec­tor. In con­trast, the ship­ping di­vi­sion de­liv­ered growth and was one of the stronger-per­form­ing ar­eas of the busi­ness dur­ing the fi­nan­cial year.

A key de­vel­op­ment dur­ing the year was the clo­sure of The Home Store’s last leased out­let in Trinidad at the end of Jan­u­ary 2026. The com­pa­ny said it has sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced ex­cess in­ven­to­ry and ex­pects prof­it mar­gins to im­prove as new prod­uct lines are in­tro­duced.

LJ Williams said it would con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing its flag­ship store in Barataria and ex­pects that lo­ca­tion to re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty in fis­cal 2027.

The com­pa­ny al­so high­light­ed the per­for­mance of its Guyana op­er­a­tions, where The Home Store con­tin­ued to record strong sales growth, sup­port­ed by the open­ing of a sec­ond store. Man­age­ment said the ap­pli­ca­tion of IFRS 16 ac­count­ing rules re­duced re­port­ed book prof­it in Guyana by $3.2 mil­lion.

De­spite that im­pact, the com­pa­ny ex­pects its Guyana busi­ness to con­tin­ue per­form­ing well and said it is ex­plor­ing ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties in that mar­ket.

Look­ing ahead, Dupres ac­knowl­edged that eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in T&T re­main dif­fi­cult.

How­ev­er, he ex­pressed op­ti­mism that the clo­sure of un­prof­itable stores and on­go­ing op­er­a­tional ad­just­ments will po­si­tion the group for stronger fi­nan­cial re­sults in the year ahead.

The com­pa­ny said these mea­sures are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive out­comes and sup­port a re­turn to im­proved prof­itabil­i­ty in fis­cal 2027.