Chairman of Mayberry Investments Limited, Chris Berry. - File

A one-off gain of more than half a billion dollars, largely from the part sale of its holdings in Lascelles deMercado and Company, has fattened Mayberry Investment Limited's bottom line to $630 million in its first quarter ending March 2007, a stratospheric increase of 986 per cent year on year.

But even when stripped of the share sale gain, Mayberry, which acted as lead broker for Angostura Limited in its two-tier US$10.65 per share acquisition of Lascelles, was still set to return net profit of more than $100 million or just about double the $58 million quarterly profit of 2007.

Angostura paid out the first tranche of funds, just under US$3089 million or US$4.50 per share, in February. The next payment to wrap up the deal, which can fall anywhere between US$4.50 and US$6.15 per share, is due by February 2011.

Blazing ahead

Mayberry's profit for the review quarter, which was equivalent to earnings per share of 53 cents, also blazed ahead of its $545 million of top-line income.

"An estimated 80 per cent of the profits have been generated from liquidating our Lascelles holdings, while 20 per cent have been generated from fairly recent investments," said Chris Berry, chairman and top shareholder in the 22-year-old brokerage.

Mayberry on Thursday refused to divulge the details of those new investments, and was equally cagey about disclosing how much of its Lascelles holdings was liquidated.

The company confirmed, however, that it has retained some of the conglomerate's shares, which are currently valued at $500 per share on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, having risen as high as $605 in February.

Mayberry is a $26 billion company, measured by assets, and its equity base climbed $600 million to $3.4 billion year on year.

business@gleanerjm.com