During ILT’s annual meeting yesterday, Chris Ramsay presented a report on the financial performance of the trust for the year ending March 31, 2024.
He said revenues for the year were up a "solid 4%" to more than $111m.
"We're pleased with the overall result given all the headwinds and the challenges that we've had, to be honest.
"We started out the first half of the year, we were close to 8% up in revenues, and we were tracking really, really well. And then [when] we hit the later part of the year [it] was all about the impact of interest rates that were only going one way, costs for every household were only going one way, and all of this combined to create a cost of living crisis that clearly impacted our revenues from about September, October onwards last year . . . which means the later part of the year eroded a lot of the gains we made at the start."
One of the highlights of the year was that for the first time in almost a decade, the organisation returned more than $9m in grants and donations back to the community, he said.
For the financial year ended March 31, 2024, ILT generated a pre-tax and donations surplus that was up 11% on the year prior to $6.619m.
This enabled donations for the year, at $3.277m, to be up $767,000 or more than 30% on the year prior.
This contributed to the total of donations from ILT Group exceeding $9m for the first time in 10 years, a total that was $737,000 or almost 9% higher than the year prior, he said.
"To have those numbers, actually, in this [financial environment], you can be pretty proud."
Mr Ramsay wanted to thank the hard work of 720 employees who were fundamental to the organisation achieving those numbers, he said.
While he was pleased with the result, he also told the board things would not be as great in the next financial year.
"We will not deliver a number like this next year ... so our revenues are down by 4%, and we don't see that improving.
"Trading profit is down, and it's down even more than that in percentage terms due to effects on our bottom-line depreciation.
"We know what we're in the midst of at the moment and that is a hell of a challenging year."
