Wilcon Depot, Inc. (Wilcon), the country’s leading home improvement and finishing construction supply retailer, reported that its first quarter 2024 net income is weaker by 23.1 percent at P740 million compared to the same period last year.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the firm said “The decline is mainly attributed to the drop in net sales in March as the long Easter holidays shifted from April last year to March this year.”

Wilcon President Lorraine Belo-Cincochan said “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,” she added.

Belo-Cincochan explained that, “This quarter’s performance was driven primarily 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.

“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.”

She noted that, “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.”

Net sales dipped 2.5 percent to P8.31 billion in the first quarter of 2024 primarily due to the low March 2024 sales with the long Easter holiday season falling in March this year versus April last year.

For the first two months of the year, net sales were up 2.3 percent. Comparable sales slid 7.3 percent for the quarter but from January to February comparable sales declined only by 2.6 percent.

One depot in Mindanao and two DIW format stores, one in Mindanao and one in Luzon, were opened during the quarter.

The depots’ net sales of P7.97 billion accounted for 95.9 percent of total net sales during the quarter, down 4.0 percent year-on-year, with same store sales declining by 7.9 percent.

On the other hand, the DIW format stores, comprising 2.8percent of total sales, recorded a total sales growth of 37.2 percent year-on-year to total P232 million for the quarter, with same store sales lower by 10.9 percent.

For both formats, Metro Manila stores recorded the highest decline as these stores also registered the highest same store sales growth in the first quarter of 2023.

Project sales, on the other hand, increased by 108.1 percent to P105 million by the end of the quarter, accounting for the remaining 1.3 percent of total net sales.