In­creased sup­pli­er costs, NIS con­tri­bu­tions as well as for­eign ex­change con­straints took a ma­jor bite in Pres­tige Hold­ings prof­its for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed May 31, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to the restau­rant man­age­ment com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial re­port for the half year, prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers for the pe­ri­od six-month pe­ri­od de­clin­ing by 45.7 per cent, falling to $18.9 mil­lion in 2026, from $34.8 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

Pres­tige Hold­ings chair­man Chris­t­ian Mout­tet not­ed the restau­rant man­age­ment com­pa­ny had seen in­creased sales vol­umes with rev­enue in­creas­ing by 1.3 per cent to $716 mil­lion com­pared to $707 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous year, but a se­ries of in­creased ex­pens­es im­pact­ed PHL's prof­its.

Mout­tet said, "No­tably, in­creased for­eign ex­change costs to set­tle for­eign payables by ac­cess­ing al­ter­na­tive cur­ren­cies and cur­ren­cy swaps through the bank­ing sys­tem at rates that were much high­er than our in­puts were orig­i­nal­ly cost­ed, in­creased Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions and in­creas­es in costs from lo­cal sup­pli­ers."

He con­tin­ued, "We have im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to ad­dress these in­creased costs, in­clud­ing al­ter­na­tive sup­ply chain op­tions, menu changes and ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ments. We ex­pect these ac­tions to ben­e­fit our bot­tom-line per­for­mance as the fi­nan­cial year pro­gress­es, and we re­main con­fi­dent in the group’s long-term per­for­mance and growth prospects."

The com­pa­ny is the lo­cal op­er­a­tor of pop­u­lar in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chis­es in­clud­ing KFC, Piz­za Hut, Sub­way, Star­bucks, and TGI Fri­days.

Mout­tet con­firmed the com­pa­ny was seek­ing more ex­pan­sion op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side of T&T.

He said, "The sec­ond TGI Fri­days restau­rant in Port­more, Ja­maica, which opened in the first quar­ter, is per­form­ing well. In ad­di­tion, man­age­ment is mak­ing good progress to launch Piz­za Hut in Pana­ma, and we ex­pect to open our two new Piz­za Hut restau­rants in Pana­ma in the fourth quar­ter. Our two Star­bucks Cafes in Guyana are per­form­ing strong­ly, and, as men­tioned above, we al­so have plans to open three new Star­bucks cafes in Guyana be­fore the end of the year."

The chair­man's re­port con­firmed that on June 23, 2026, Agos­ti­ni Lim­it­ed’s takeover of Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed for­mal­ly closed hav­ing achieved all nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry and share­hold­er ap­provals.