By James A. Loyola

Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc. (RRHI), a member of the Gokongwei group of companies, is allotting P4 billion for capital expenditures (capex) this year for the construction of 150 new stores.

During the firm’s annual stockholders’ meeting RRHI President Robina Gokongwei-Pe said they spent a higher P5.6 billion in 2016 although this included mergers and acquisition costs while the P4 billion this year has yet to include potential acquisitions. She said the biggest share of the capex at 36 percent will go to the opening of new Robinsons Supermarkets, Robinsons Department Stores will get 21 percent of the pie, specialty stores 13 percent, Do-It-Yourself stores 12 percent and 9 percent each for convenience stores and drugstores.

For this year, Gokongwei-Pe said they are pursuing the organic expansion of 150 new stores of which 51 will be in Metro Manila, 27 in the rest of Luzon, while the remaining 72 will be opened in Visayas and Mindanao.

RRHI is also aiming to expand its gross profit margin by 10 to 20 basis points and grow its same store sales by 2 to 4 percent (lower than the 6.7 percent in 2016 which was boosted by election spending) while continuing to be on the look out for potential mergers and acquisitions.

The firm reported that its attributable net income by 26.9 percent to P996 million for the first quarter this year, driven by the 28.2 percent expansion in operating income.

RRHI said it posted a 100bps gain in gross profit to 22.2 percent and a healthy same store sales growth of 3.2 percent for the period. Core net earnings (net income excluding interest income on available-for-sale investments, unrealized foreign exchange gains or losses and equity earnings from an affiliate), on the other hand, grew by 21 percent to P842 million from P696 million.