Wilcon Depot Inc., a leading home improvement and finishing construction supply retailer, said Monday its first-quarter net income fell 23.1 percent from a year ago, on lower sales and higher expenses.
Net income reached P740 million from January to March this year, down from P962 million it earned in the same period last year, Wilcon said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.
First-quarter net sales declined 2.5 percent year-on-year to P8.31 billion from P8.53 billion a year ago on lower net sales in March as the long Easter holidays shifted from April to March this year.
“Our earnings for the first quarter may have declined 23 percent year-on-year, but it’s still higher than any quarter’s earnings prior to 2022. We are looking forward to better results in the future as we work towards improving our performance to reach or even beat our 2022 results,” said Wilcon president Lorraine Belo-Cincochan.
Belo-Cincochan said the year-on-year drop in March sales was due to the Easter holidays falling in March this year, and exacerbated by the high-base effect since the group registered its highest grossing month in March last year.
Belo-Cincochan expressed hope sales would bounce back in the succeeding quarters.
“We are still on track to reach our 100-store target by the end of the year. We have opened three new stores during the quarter, two Do It Wilcon [DIW] format branches and one depot,” Belo-Cincochan said.
The depots’ net sales, which accounted for 95.9 percent of total net sales in the first quarter, amounted to P7.97 billion, down 7.9 percent from a year ago level.
