Wilcon Depot Inc., a leading home improvement and construction supplies retailer, said it expects revenues to grow at a low double-digit this year as it continues to open more stores.
Wilcon chairman Willam Belo said in an interview at the sidelines of the annual stockholders’ meeting that the company was slated to open seven more stores this year, after opening an outlet in Butuan City.
He said of the seven stores, three would be located in Mindanao, two in the Visayas, one in Northern Luzon and another in Southern Luzon.
Wilcon spends about P150 million per store, excluding inventory. A store has an average size of 7,000 to 10,000 square meters.
Wilcon also lined up five new store openings in 2018, all of which would be outside Metro Manila.
Belo said as the company continued to expand outside Metro Manila, he was expecting the contribution from stores in the Visayas and Mindanao to to increase in the coming years.
He said the company, using proceeds from recent initial public offering, aimed to have 65 stores by 2021.
Wilcon reported a net income of P390.5 million in the first quarter, as sales increased 14.1 percent to P4.18 billion from P3.667 billion a year ago.
The three new depot-format stores which opened between April 2016 and January 2017 contributed 5.27 percent of the company’s first-quarter sales.
Share price of Wilcon closed at an all time high of P7 per share Monday, up 2.6 percent from Friday’s close of P6.82.
