Caribbean Airlines just published its audited year end financials… almost ten years late and it’s not pretty!

Yup, you heard that correct Caribbean Airlines has finally delivered its year-end audited financial results for 2016. Almost nine years after that financial year ended. 

The audit was completed in April of this year by KPMG.   It shows that the company suffered major losses in 2016. It had an accumulated deficit of about TT$2.2 billion or about US$324 million. The total comprehensive loss was TT$695 million, about US$102 million. 

Remember, Caribbean Airlines is a Trinidad and Tobago state-owned company, that’s why everything is quoted in TTD.

Aside from the obvious issue that the company is bleeding money, the other glaring concern is that it’s 2025 and the 2016 audited results are just now being released.

On top of that, according to KMPG, it was unable to verify the accuracy of some key financial items because of missing records and incomplete documents.

Trinidad’s new Finance Minister revealed in Parliament that the airline spent over TT$60 million on audits over the years, but did not file any audited accounts for almost a decade. 

Since her reelection, Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been very vocal about her feelings towards the state of Caribbean Airlines. She had given the company two years to turn things around before people started losing their jobs.

But since then, the CEO, CFO, Company Secretary and Chief Commercial Officer have all resigned.

And we recently talked about them cutting routes, including Kingston, Jamaica to Florida, which they say is underperforming.

So, there’s a lot going on with Caribbean Airlines right now. Not to mention they still have eight years of audited results outstanding from 2017 to 2024. Hopefully we don’t have to wait another decade to get those.

And that’s the bottom line.