HOME improvement and construction supplies retailer Wilcon Depot Inc. expects to meet its 100-store goal by yearend following the opening of three new outlets in the first quarter.

"We are still on track to reach our 100-store target by the end of the year," Wilcon President Lorraine Belo-Cincochan said in a statement on Monday.

The listed firm launched two stores — depot and Do It Wilcon (DIW) format branches — in Mindanao and one DIW outlet in Luzon during the January-March 2024 period.

Wilcon plans to open two DIW branches and eight depot-format stores this year as part of efforts to ramp up its nationwide expansion.

In 2023, the company opened nine branches — seven depots and two Home Essentials — that brought its total store network to 90 by year-end.

Wilcon reported netting P740 million in the first three months of 2024, down 23 percent from the P222 million earned last year, while net sales dipped by 2.5 percent year on year to P8.31 billion.

The results were mainly driven by the "considerable year-on-year drop in March sales because of the Easter holidays falling in March this year and exacerbated by the fact that March last year was our highest grossing month," Belo-Cincochan said.

"Our April year-on-year sales growth reversed the decline in March, and we are hoping that our improving average daily sales will be sustained from here on," she added.

Although the first-quarter earnings had declined, the Wilcon executive said the figure was still higher than any quarter's income prior to 2022.

"We are looking forward to better results in the future as we work towards improving our performance to reach or even beat our 2022 results," she added.

Wilcon Depot's share price rose by 20 centavos to P16.90 on Monday.