LOCAL retailing giant Puregold Price Club Inc. has further improved its bottom line in 2015 as revenues were estimated to have grown by about 10 to 11 percent.
This was on the back of the company’s aggressive retail network expansion across its brands including Puregold, S&R and Lawson stores, Puregold VP for operations Antonio E. delos Santos said in an interview with reporters late Monday. In 2014, net sales of Puregold hit P84.7 billion.
“We hit our target last year despite growing by double digits [in terms of revenues] over the last four to five years. Our same store sales growth remained very strong at 3.7 percent,” Santos said.
For this year, Santos said the company would again target a double-digit growth in revenues of at least 10 percent despite coming from an already high base in 2015.
“The target is double digit this year. Hopefully, the [higher spending during the] election period will translate to consumer spending. There is a growing trend whereby people are said to be spending more for telecommunications and other goods, which we are not a leader of. Right now, we still want to grow double digit, at least 10 percent,” Santos said.
The growth could be achieved during the Christmas season, he said. “Even during an election year, the same trend is observed—that the highest spending is during the Christmas season,” he added.
Puregold Price Club is allocating P2.6 billion for its capital spending this year to fund another aggressive network expansion plan across different brands and platforms.
Of the capital outlay programmed for this year, about P1 billion will be allocated for Puregold, specifically for the construction of 25 new stores across the country. Santos said two of the 25, one in Marikina and one in Cavite, have began operations.
The company said it would be spending P1 billion to put up two more S&R branches.
The company said it was also allocating P450 million to put up 75 Lawson stores in Metro Manila and another P150 million for the construction of 10 S&R QSR stores. Amy R. Remo