Private placement arranged by NCB Cap Market

Jamaican petroleum retailer, Future Energy Source Company Limited (FESCO) has secured $1 billion in debt financing needed to continue its expansion programme.

FESCO has advised that it has secured the debt financing by way of a five-year corporate bond to be listed on the Private Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange. The debt finance was arranged by NCB Capital Markets Limited, acting as arranger and JCSD Trustee Services Limited as Trustee.

FESCO has been on an aggressive expansion prior to going public over a year ago with the latest expansion being the recent opening of its flagship Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. FESCO, which is in the business of fuel marketing and retailing plans to add four to six retail service stations to its network of 16 over the next year and a half.

The company recently opened its FYC Refill Water Store and its FYC Express Mart convenience store at its Beechwood Avenue service station, as part of efforts to develop that location into a one-stop-shop. FESCO has set April 2023 as its target date to enter the liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, market.

Managing Director Jeremy Barnes told a Mayberry Investors’ Briefing earlier this year that, in addition to going into LNG, FESCO will also be coming out with new products.

“Moving into the LPG space is very capital intensive and equipment intensive, we will start making investments and deploying capital to acquire assets. Going forward we will be making investments in cylinders,” Barnes said.

For the quarter ended December 2021, FESCO made a profit of J$73.6 million, more than tripling the J$20 million of earnings in the comparative period of 2020. Revenues for the quarter also climbed 139 per cent to J$3.6 billion.

Over nine months, the company recorded J$170.8 million in profit, putting it on track to meet its profit forecast for year ending March 2022. FESCO is projecting J$263 million of profit for the year.

By 2025, it expects to be close to achieving half-billion in earnings.