Wilcon Depot to complete expansion one year early

Wilcon Depot, Inc., the country’s largest construction supplies and home improvement retail chain, is ramping up the opening of new branches nationwide to take advantage of the growing domestic economy.

In an interview after the firm’s annual stockholders’ meeting Wilcon Chairman Emeritus William Belo said the firm had aimed to open 65 branches in five years or by 2021.

This will require the company to open 24 more branches from 2018 to 2021. Belo said they are planning to open nine branches this year with three branches already opened so far.

“We will be opening one branch a month for the rest of the year,” he said adding that the fourth branch will be opened at the end of June and the next one in July.

Belo noted that, “the original plan was to complete by 2021 but we expect to complete this by 2020.” He added that they will open seven stores next year and eight more in 2020.

Most of Wilcon’s branches are in although Belo said that they are now branching out to areas across the nation where they still have no presence. This includes Visayas and Mindanao.

Depending on the format and the location, each store will cost about R180 million to R250 million including inventory.

Wilcon still has R4 billion in cash left from the proceeds of its R7 billion initial public offering to fund its aggressive store expansion program.

However, the company is not relying solely on store expansion to grow its profits. Belo said they are also adding high-margin products to their portfolio to improve profits.

“This will add on our product lines that will give us better margins like lighting fixtures… And we are still getting into appliances, and the PPR (polypropylene random) pipings. These are the three major product categories that we want to focus in the next three years,” Belo said.