Word on the street is that the Cari-Med Group is preparing for listing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, with all probability that this will take place by early 2023 ICInsider.com has been reliably informed.
The company was launched in 1986 as Cari-Med Limited, a small pharmaceutical distribution company, by Glen and Marva Christian.
“The Group has an excellent reputation in the market and is the dominant pharmaceutical company in the country”, one source informed ICInsdier.com.
The Group represents and distributes Lysol, Harpic, Gillette, Duracell, Wrigley, Scotch Brite, Ensure and Purina, to name some of the products they manage.
In 2020 a restructuring of the companies within the Group resulted in Cari-Med being renamed Cari-Med Group, the parent company of the Group.
Marketing activities are organized under three divisions, Consumer and pharmaceuticals, with the third being medical supplies, Hospital, Medical Equipment and Disposables, staffed by sales and marketing personnel teams.
The Group serves markets across the Caribbean region with exports of its home brands such as Lullabye baby products, BemStar Adult Diapers, and the KenClean line of laundry products.
The Group invested more than $6 billion in the development of a distribution centre in St. Catherine to house a 258,000-square-foot facility on land along Salt Pond Road in Bernard Lodge to house the warehouses and administrative offices of the Consumer Goods Division.
CariMed and NCB Capital Markets staff at the signing of an agreement appointing the brokerage house as financial advisers.
Cari-Med employs over 900 employees has been with the company website indicates. Dun & Bradstreet put revenues for the Group at Cari-Med at US$37 million and Kirk Distributors at US$38 million and the Cari-Med building in New Kingston is said to generate rental income of US$20. But one source is of the view that the revenues in the distribution may be closer to J$15 billion, which could deliver a profit of around $600 to $700 million, but the financial cost to build out the warehouse may result in net profit being trimmed below this level.
NCB Capital Markets is the broker for the issue.
The trade means that Gooden, who previously owned a mere 242,230 or a fraction of one percent, will now own around 10 percent of the company, the third largest shareholder behind Excel with 85,231,108 units and NCB Capital Market with 66 million shares or 18 percent.
The facility is a five years corporate bond to be listed on the Private Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, with NCB Capital Markets acting as Arranger. The proceeds will be utilized including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditure related to the expansion of its dealership network and service station footprint and funding the entry into the consumer cooking gas and LPG market.
Spur Tree Spices, with revenues, said to be just over $1 billion, should also be coming in October, if all goes well, with a view to pull in $250 million. GK Capital are brokers of the two issues that are slated to list on the Junior Market. The prospectus of the company that has been manufacturing seasonings and sauces since 2006 for the local and export markets is also at an advanced stage of readiness, ICInsider.com gathers.
Applicants in the General Public Pool receives 1,000 shares plus aroud 43.876 percent of the excess for they applied. The Brokers for the issue states that “multiple applications from the same JCSD account for each pool were combined and treated as one application for the purposes of allocation.
NCB Capital Markets, the brokers for the issue, reported on Thursday that the issue, priced at 80 cents per share and opened on Wednesday, closed on Thursday the Junior Market IPO issue was oversubscribed. The successful closure of the issue will see the listings of companies rising to 42 from the current 41 on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange.
The Company plans to use the amount collected for expansion and working capital purposes, including but not limited to new product lines, expansion and renovation of retail stores, including an expansion of the parking area at the retail store at Grove Road in St Andrew. Completion of the buildout of and relocating to the new warehouse, head office and retail store at Ferry, Acquiring and install information technology systems for greater efficiency and improve customer experience and expansion of Mobile delivery fleet of vehicles.
For the nine months to September last year, the Company had revenue from ordinary operations of US$39.26 million, reflecting an increase of US$240,000, on the US$39 million generated for the same period in 2018. This miniscule rise was primarily due to an increase in the annual toll rates starting in July 2019 following the toll rate increases allowed under the Concession Agreement. Revenue was also affected by decreased traffic since March 2019, primarily at the Portmore leg, due to the near completion of construction works of the Nelson Mandela Highway. The reduced traffic at Portmore has, however, been offset by increased traffic at the Spanish Town toll plaza as more users divert to the Nelson Mandela Highway.
The latest initial public offering of shares 
