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Philippines: Retailers post higher profits in 9 months
MANILA, Philippines — Retailers reported higher earnings in the nine months to September.
In separate disclosures, SSI Group, the country’s largest specialty store retailer, said net income rose 12 percent to P342 million while core recurring income, which excludes one-time write-offs related to the group’s store rationalization program, increased 13 percent to P444 million.
SSI Group president Anthony Huang said improvements in sales productivity and operating margin reflected sustained consumer demand, increased efficiency of the store network and the strength of the brand portfolio.
With the onset of the Christmas season, the company is optimistic about its growth for the rest of the year.
“We enter the Christmas shopping season confident that SSI is in a strong position to capture increasing discretionary spending,” Huang said.
As of the end of September, the group was operating 652 stores covering more than 131,000 square meters.
The group’s store network also includes e-commerce properties lacoste.com.ph, payless.ph, beautybar.com.ph, 158db.com.ph and ssilife.com.ph.
Meanwhile, Lucio Co-owned Puregold Price Club reported a seven percent growth in its consolidated net income to P3.9 billion.
“Our retail businesses continue to deliver steady growth and we remain optimistic that the positive momentum will be sustained for the remaining months of 2017. We also registered better than expected same store sales growth (SSSG) of 4.5 percent for Puregold stores and 10.7 percent for S&R stores in the first nine months of 2017 which were driven by the strong consumer demand and the sustained economic growth of the country.” said Puregold president Vincent Co.
As of the end of September, Puregold had 352 stores nationwide. These include 291 Puregold stores, 13 S&R membership shopping warehouse, and 31 S&R New York Style QSR, 9 NE Bodega Supermarkets and 8 Budgetlane Supermarkets.
The company is targeting to open 25 new Puregold stores and two new S&R warehouse outlets this year.
Cosco Capital, the retail holding firm of Co, grew its net income 5.6 percent to P3.4 billion, driven by the much improved profit contribution of its liquefied petroleum gas business.
The group’s grocery retailing businesses, Puregold Price Club, Inc. and S&R Membership Shopping Club, contributed 58 percent of total profits, followed by the commercial real estate segment with 23 percent while the liquor distribution business accounted for 12 percent.
The specialty retailing segment, composed of Liquigaz Philippines Corp. and Office Warehouse accounted for 12 percent of net profit.
Source: http://www.philstar.com/business/2017/11/17/1759568/retailers-post-higher-profits-9-months