Lumber Depot announced the acquisition of a 35 percent in Atlantic Hardware & Plumbing Company Limited, a 30 year old Jamaican company, engaged in the wholesaling and distribution of hardware, building materials, plumbing, electrical, tools, and supplies to hardware stores, contractors, and developers across Jamaica.
Lumber Depot acquisition announcement.
The business located on “Ashenheim Road in Kingston is led by Managing Director, Deanall Barnes, an experienced business leader in the trading and distribution of building materials”, the release from Lumber Depot states.
There will be no change to the business strategy of Atlantic. Accordingly, it will continue to operate as a dedicated hardware wholesaler and distributor. The acquisition’s purchase price is $210 million and was funded with internal funds.
The investment will account for from May 1, 2024 by Lumber Depot. The majority shareholder of Atlantic is Construct Group, a private investment company.
Lumber Depot did not disclose either revenues nor profitability of the company in which the shares were acquired. ICInsider.com projects the company to get a boost in profits as a result of the investment, that should exceed the returns they were getting on the liquid funds they held. The Lumber Depot netted a 25 percent per annum return on equity up to the February quarter as such, it is unlikely that they did not pay much more than 4 time earnings for the 35 percent acquired and that would boost profit for Lumber Depot around $70 million and earnings per share in the region of 36 cents for the current fiscal year. There are also prospects for economies of scale, particularly in the purchase and importation of goods for resale that could result in cost savings, in the future.
According to the Central Bank Jamaica, the “headline inflation rate at April 2024 was 5.3 percent, which was within the Bank’s target of 4 to 6 percent and 0.3 percentage point lower than the rate recorded at March 2024. It was also lower than the Bank’s most recent forecast, mainly due to a faster-than-projected deceleration in agricultural food inflation. Core inflation (which excludes food and fuel prices from the Consumer Price Index (CPI)) was 5.7 percent in April 2024, marginally lower than the 5.9 percent in March 2024.”
At the end of the auction total CDs that will be outstanding for 30 days amount to $128.5 billion this is down from under $160 billion dollars in late March when the average rate was 11.13 percent.
The 2024 calendar year inflation is now negative 1.9 percent and seems set to push inflation to zero by the end of summer after the months when inflation tends to rise above norms.
The data was taken from a report on airport traffic during April published by Grupo Aeroportuario Del Pacifico operators of Jamaica’s two major airports.
Jamaica’s 
The moderately improved inflows pushed the year to date performance above 2023 with a marginal increase to $499.6 million from $499 million.
Half of the total issue or 250 million shares are new with an equal number to be sold by existing shareholders, bringing the total issued shares to 2.5 billion units and the shareholders’ equity capital to over $900 million.
At least 120,931,383 participating ordinary shares are available for subscription by the public and up to 379,068,617 shares are for Reserve Share Applicants.
Last week, investors drove up 
Helping with the surge in profits was a sharp drop in the cost of sales from $5.5 billion to just $4 billion in the current quarter as the cost of raw materials fell sharply in the first quarter from $1.3 billion to $505 million.
The company generated $2.2 billion in cash inflows, bringing first quarter balance to $6.3 billion.