Following the receipt of a remittance licence, microcredit licence, and entry into Ghana during 2023, Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL) is looking to capitalise on its prior investments to grow its business opportunities in Jamaica and globally.

SVL’s subsidiary Supreme Ventures Fintech Limited began its remittance operations in February through six of SVL’s company-owned locations which began to offer the Ria Money Transfer to roll and its proprietary Evolve Money Transfer products. Although the initial roll-out has only gone on for three months, SVL Executive Chairman Gary Peart is positive that the future roll-out of the remittance product to the rest of the Jamaican population will be received.

This is based on the current interest from 100-200 applications by third-party agents who would want to offer remittance products to customers following SVL’s initial phase. Remittance inflows to Jamaica marginally declined to US$3.37 billion in 2023.

“There will come a point where the regulator [Bank of Jamaica] will assess to ensure that we have the proper AML, proper structures, compliance, etc. Once we get the go ahead there, we will be allowed to roll-out right across the country. In other words, we can then bring on third-party agents. Where we are now is the budget we’ve put in place for those six company-owned stores were materially ahead of that budget,” stated Peart at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) held on Thursday at the AC Hotel by Marriott.

SV Fintech represents a key focus of SVL’s overall shift from being a gaming company to a technology company. Apart from offering the ability for individuals to purchase prepaid phone credit at their third-party agents, SVL also has developed different forms of proprietary software for its different offerings. Its Charge Up product allows for different companies to offer airtime or access to their services along with its proprietary lottery software that has been deployed into Guyana and Ghana.

While Peart didn’t delve heavily into artificial intelligence during the meeting, he did highlight that it would assist them in developing new products for customers based on the depth of data SVL produces daily. This would also filter into other products on the sports betting and horse racing segments which are continuing to gain more international reach.

“We are very laser focused on customers changes, wants, etc., and so we’ve made those investments. We believe that because of our distribution and size of our distribution [network], and the feedback we’re getting from customers, they want additional services. That’s why Fintech becomes important. All of that is going to be consolidated under what we call the Supreme Life platform. We will have a platform that will consolidate all of these services. We’re moving the business in keeping with international trends and at some point, you will see a consolidation to create more efficiency, which will drive more profits and more profits drive more dividends,” Peart added on the grand scheme for SVL.

Following a year of its Ghanian partner Game Park Limited being licensed, it has received a ten-year license which now gives it the room to introduce more products to the Ghana market. Game Park is the local lottery promoter for SVL while its subsidiary IBET Ghana Limited has a general services agreement to provide management and technical services with the promoter. SVL’s other subsidiaries derive revenue from a software license agreement and a trademark license agreement. SVL lent Game Park $730.26 million during 2023 as it got its operations started.

According to Peart, the Ghana experience will guide the company in how it can deploy its offerings into other markets for the future. SVL has direct operations in Guyana and streams its Cash Pot signal into South Africa.

As its players continue to win more money from its games with the fourth quarter being extraordinary, SVL is also doubling down further on its microfinance interests with its wholly owned subsidiary McKayla Financial Services Limited growing its revenues by 19 per cent during the first quarter. The growth of McKayla is also complemented by the growth of Dolla Financial Services Limited in which SVL has a 15 per cent stake.

Although Peart couldn’t give further discussion on the Fair Trading Commission’s (FTC) recent claim in the Supreme Court, he responded, “Yes, there will be a defence filed, but one of the concerns is that we actually were awaiting a decision from the appeal court, and we were pretty surprised that the Fair Trading [Commission] went ahead of what we would prefer to as due process to file that [claim]. Whatever it is, the truth will get out.”

The FTC is seeking to have SVL and its subsidiary Supreme Ventures Gaming Limited fined and have injunctions placed on them under the Fair Competition Act. The case should have begun on May 20, but was adjourned to October 24 pending SVL’s appeal. SVL had taken issue with a February 2022 report by the FTC and took them to court where they eventually lost in May 2023.

SVL’s first quarter saw gross ticket sales marginally down to $28.69 billion and a relatively lower payout ratio of 69.90 per cent. This translated to a three per cent increase in total revenue to $13.22 billion. Due to a one tenth cut in expenses to $1.68 billion, operating profit improved by a third to $1.43 billion. Despite higher income taxes, SVL’s consolidated net profit increased by 22 per cent to $867.95 million, with net profit attributable to shareholders of $855.92 million and an earnings per share of $0.3239.

This improved performance led to SVL declaring its second highest dividend ever of $0.3016 totalling $795.40 million to be paid on July 16 to shareholders on record as of May 10. This also considerably benefits Peart whose decision to accept SVL shares for his compensation led to him be one of the fifty largest shareholders with 6,783,987 shares worth $158.54 million based on Thursday’s closing price of $23.37.

SVL shareholders elected Usain Bolt and Leighton McKnight to the board of SVL, while re-electing Damian Chin-You, Duncan Stewart, and Peart. All of the other resolutions were approved.