The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co) has re­port­ed a near 20 per cent in­crease in prof­it af­ter tax for the first nine months of 2026, de­spite con­tin­ued pres­sure from high­er ex­cise tax­es and the growth of il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade in T&T.

In its fi­nan­cial re­sults for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, the com­pa­ny said prof­it be­fore tax for the pe­ri­od, rose to $97 mil­lion, up $14.1 mil­lion or 17 per cent from the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. Prof­it af­ter tax in­creased by 19.7 per cent to $72.9 mil­lion, an im­prove­ment of $12 mil­lion over the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

Rev­enue edged up by 0.1 per cent to $332.4 mil­lion, re­flect­ing mod­est growth amid chal­leng­ing mar­ket con­di­tions.

In re­view­ing the re­sults, Wit­co chair, In­grid Lash­ley, said the slight in­crease in rev­enue was dri­ven by changes in do­mes­tic brand vol­umes and stronger ex­port sales to Guyana and Suri­name.

The com­pa­ny not­ed that busi­ness con­di­tions in T&T re­mained dif­fi­cult as high­er ex­cise tax­es and the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of il­lic­it trade in­ten­si­fied pres­sure on the le­git­i­mate to­bac­co mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to Wit­co, do­mes­tic brand per­for­mance was sup­port­ed by fo­cused com­mer­cial ex­e­cu­tion strate­gies and on­go­ing route-to-mar­ket en­hance­ments aimed at main­tain­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Look­ing ahead, the com­pa­ny said it would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on mar­ket ex­e­cu­tion, route-to-mar­ket im­prove­ments, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ini­tia­tives and op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence, while in­vest­ing in its prod­uct port­fo­lio and pur­su­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that sup­port sus­tain­able growth.

Re­flect­ing con­fi­dence in the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion, the board has rec­om­mend­ed an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.10 per or­di­nary share. The div­i­dend would be paid on No­vem­ber 30, to share­hold­ers on record as of No­vem­ber 11.

Sep­a­rate­ly, Wit­co an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Nar­ine­jit Pariag as a di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny with ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 28.

The com­pa­ny de­scribed Pariag as a sea­soned fi­nance, risk and gov­er­nance ex­ec­u­tive with more than 30 years of lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence across the en­er­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices sec­tors.

Pariag has held se­nior ex­ec­u­tive and board-lev­el po­si­tions and brings ex­per­tise in fi­nan­cial over­sight, en­ter­prise risk man­age­ment, au­dit and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

He is a Fel­low of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants (FC­CA) and holds a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

The ap­point­ment was dis­closed in a no­tice to share­hold­ers is­sued pur­suant to the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, 2012.