While earnings are seen to be flat this year, the Philippines’ leading home improvement and finishing construction supplies retailer, Wilcon Depot, Inc., is increasing its capital expenditure budget by 45 percent to ₱3.2 billion from ₱2.2 billion last year.

In an online media briefing, Wilcon Vice President for Investor Relations Jean Alger stated that the bulk of this year’s capital expenditure (capex) will be allocated for new stores and warehouses, as the firm continues to expand nationwide in anticipation of a recovery in sales.

Wilcon President and CEO Lorraine Belo-Cincochan said they are planning to open a total of eight stores this year, even though the home improvement market still has to recover.

The balance of the capex will be spent on store and transportation equipment (₱327 million), renovations and repairs (₱ 568 million), and its IT infrastructure (₱137 million).

Wilcon is focusing on growing its online or e-commerce platforms to capture the younger segments of the market after noting that consumers from the younger generations, including early nesters, are more into making online purchases.

Meanwhile, Wilcon Senior Executive Vice President and COO Rosemarie Bosch-Ong said they expect earnings to sales to start growing in the second half of the year after registering a drop in the first quarter of 2025.

She noted that, sales have started to pick up in May after the mid-term elections and they hope this will continue in June until the rest of the year.

“Although we’re seeing growth, we’re very conservative in our estimate. We’re looking at the single digit (same store sales growth), probably in the low side because the first quarter was not really that good,” said Ong.

She added that, “We’re still experiencing the different headwinds that we’ve experienced in the past year. But, looking at the coming months, we’re looking at a very good showing, especially towards the end of June.”

Wilcon is hoping that an expected cut in interest rates will boost sales, especially in its business-to-business market as well as for consumers who have mortgages.

Alger also pointed out that growth will also be due to the lower base set by the second half of 2024 since they had one-time charges during this period, including damage due to a fire in one of their branches, while sales were still strong in the first semester last year.

However, she said earnings will be “flattish” this year since “we’re actually just looking at recovering the decline that we had in the first quarter. So we’re just looking at getting it even.

“But if sales will pick up some more, then we have just flattish to like a very low growth in the earnings if the impact can really be felt in the second quarter.”