Puregold Price Club Inc., the grocery chain operator led by businessman Lucio Co, said its income in 2019 grew 9 percent to P6.77 billion, from the previous year’s P6.2 billion on the continued expansion of its stores mostly in Luzon.
Consolidated net sales went up by 9 percent to P154.49 billion in 2019 from P141.14 billion in the previous year, the company said.
Around 77 percent of the revenues is attributed to the Puregold Stores network and 23 percent came from S&R Membership warehouse clubs and S&R New York Style Pizza stores.
Income from operations expanded by 11 percent to P11.38 billion in 2019, compared to the P10.23 billion recorded in 2018.
The number of its stores, which included the quick-service restaurant S&R pizza, reached 436 at the end of 2019, from 408 in 2018 and 372 in 2017. It ended 2019 with a total net selling area of around 565,000 square meters.
Puregold stores registered stronger than expected same-store sales growth (SSSG) of 4.6 percent in 2019 while that of S&R reached 8.3 percent, the company said.
“Our 2019 SSSG was driven by higher consumer spending fueled both by minimum-wage inflation in 2018 and easing inflation in 2019,” the company said.
“The company plans to offer online grocery shopping to 100 Puregold stores from the current 40 stores in our Puregold Mobile App by the end of 2020 as we expect changes in consumer shopping behavior due to the Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] situation.”
Puregold also said it will continue its expansion program by opening 25 new Puregold stores. It has opened two S&R membership shopping warehouse in 2020. “This will provide our shoppers better convenience especially now that travel is limited due to quarantine.”
The company said it will spend some P3.4 billion in capital expenditures (capex) this year, down by a third from last year’s budget of P5.2 billion.
Of this year’s capex, some P1 billion was set aside for the construction of the 25 new Puregold stores, P1.6 billion for two S&R stores, P200 million for 10 S&R pizza stores and P600 million as maintenance capex.