Puregold posts income in 2018, plans 25 new stores in 2019

As supermarket chain Puregold Price Club, Inc. grew its income to almost 17 billion in 2018 on the back of strong sales growth, it now plans to continue its annual store expansion this year.

A disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange showed that Puregold has reported a consolidated net income of 16.52 billion in 2018, an increase of 11.6 percent from the 15.8 billion recorded in the same period in 2017.

This, as Puregold stores registered stronger than expected same store sales growth (SSSG) of 5.8 percent in 2018, while S&R registered a SSSG of 8.4 percent during the same period.

As of end 2018, Puregold group has a total of 408 stores nationwide. These include 354 Puregold stores, 16 S&R membership shopping

warehouse, and 39 S&R New York Style QSR.

For this year, the company said it will open another 25 new Puregold stores and four new S&R warehouse.

"We were able to sustain our SSSG in the last quarter of 2018 driven by higher consumer spending fueled both by minimum wage inflation and higher takehome pay as a result of the tax reform law passed early 2018," Puregold told the exchange.

During the period, Puregold consolidated net sales increased by 13.2 percent to 1140.9 billion, with 78 percent of the revenues attributed from the Puregold Stores network and 22 percent coming from S&R Membership warehouse clubs and S&R New York Style Pizza stores.

The firm's income from operations also grew to 18.94 billion in 2018, up by 3.3 percent compared to 18.65 billion during the same period last year.