Chief executive Chris Ramsay told the ILT board on Thursday of its financial result for the financial year which ended March 31.
ILT recorded a net surplus for the year of $6,243,000, with sales lower by $9.5 million or 10.2%.
Mr Ramsay said the result was significantly affected by the Covid-19 outbreak - there had been a decrease in profit of $516,000 compared with 2020.
However, given the challenges, he believed the result could be considered a good one.
"It is a result that in any other year I would be a bit disappointed with but given the impact with Covid-19, I’m really happy with the way we ended."
There were a couple of factors which had offset the considerable drop in sales, and consequently in profit, he said.
Firstly was the Government’s wage subsidy which tallied $3.56 million.
A business-wide restructure and a reduction in controllable costs had also been key, he said.
"We had to cut our capital expenditure and maintenance work, so that saved us $1.2 million. If we hadn’t done that, we would be in a worse position."
The unexpected good result gave ILT a moral boost and Mr Ramsay said the trust started the 2021-22 financial year "more positively than forecasted."
The year-to-date profit was $2.1 million.
"This is ahead of the 2020 result of $1.6 million - Covid-affected - and also the 2019 result for the same period of $1.8 million."
However, it was too early to celebrate as there was still "tremendous uncertainty" with Covid-19 and potential alert level changes, he said.
"If there’s one thing we know, it’s that whenever the alert level changes, we lose at least 20% of our business.
So we are still cautiously optimistic - those have been my favourite words to describe it."
