Holidays pull down Wilcon earnings by 23%

MANILA, Philippines — Lower sales due to the earlier Easter holidays pulled down the first-quarter earnings of home improvement retailer Wilcon Depot Inc. by 23.1 percent to P740 million.

The Belo-led company on Monday said net sales declined by 2.5 percent to P8.31 billion during the period due to low March sales and a higher base.

“The quarter’s performance was driven by the considerable year-on-year drop in March sales because of the Easter holidays falling in March this year and exacerbated by the fact that March last year was our highest grossing month,” Wilcon president Lorraine Belo-Cincochan said in a statement.

“Our April year-on-year sales growth reversed the decline in March and we are hoping that our improving average daily sales will be sustained from here on,” Cincochan said.

READ: Weak home upgrade trend trimmed Wilcon results in 2023

Wilcon added to its network three new stores during the quarter—two in Mindanao and one in Luzon—inching closer to its 100-store target by the end of the year. As of end-March, Wilcon had 93 stores across the country.

Private construction activities

Depot branches accounted for P7.97 billion of the total net sales, down by 4 percent.

Do It Wilcon format stores, meanwhile, recorded a sales growth of 37.2 percent to P232 million.

Operating expenses increased by 6.9 percent to P2.47 billion due to expansion-related costs, such as depreciation and trucking, according to Wilcon.

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“We are looking forward to better results in the future as we work toward improving our performance to reach or even beat our 2022 results,” Cincochan said.

In 2022, Wilcon booked record earnings, which surged by 50.2 percent to P3.85 billion, due to the recovery of private construction activities as pandemic restrictions eased.

A year later, higher costs pulled down the company’s net income to P3.5 billion. —Meg J. Adonis INQ