Double-digit growth for 3 retail firms

Three of the country’s leading retailers posted double-digit profit growth in 2017, riding on strong consumer spending in the country.

Leading home improvement/construction supply retailer Wilcon Depot Inc. last year recorded a 56-percent growth in net profit to P1.38 billion on higher sales from its growing store network and improving margins.

Gaisano-led Metro Retail Stores Group Inc. (MRSGI) grew its net profit last year by 23.7 percent to P977 million, attributed to a robust retail landscape and operational enhancement programs.

Leading fashion and specialty retailer SSI Group saw last year’s net profit rise by 19 percent to P275 million on increased store productivity. Excluding one-off and non-operational items, core profit rose by 12 percent to P652 million.

For Wilcon, (pro-forma) net sales stood at P17.748 billion, up by 11.2 percent, driven by sales growth of 6 percent from its old stores and additional sales from the opening of five new depots in first-class cities outside Metro Manila.

“We attained our target margin expansion for 2017 with a 29.7-percent gross profit margin (from 27.4 percent in 2016) primarily by increasing the contribution to total sales of our higher margin products and more efficient sourcing process to achieve timely sales incentives and purchase discounts,” Wilcon’s chief financial officer Mark Andrew Belo said.

Wilcon’s flagship format, the depot, accounted for 96.9 percent or P17.198 billion, while sales generated by the smaller home essentials format stores comprised the remaining 3.1 percent or P550 million of total sales.

SSI’s 2017 revenue stood at P18.5 billion while it also generated positive operating cash flow of P1.9 billion in 2017.

“We saw healthy demand from our customers in the fourth quarter of the year, a trend that continued into the first quarter of 2018. Resilient consumer demand and the group’s strengthened store network and increased operating efficiencies were the drivers of the group’s turn around in 2017. We expect that these same factors to continue to drive our growth in 2018,” said SSI president Anthony Huang.

For MRSGI, sales across all store formats amounted to P35.01 billion.

“We were able to achieve our targets by properly executing our margin improvement, cost realization and sales programs. These were part of our margin enhancement efforts that led to higher net income growth,” MRSGI chair and chief executive officer Frank Gaisano said. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA