Bangkok--21 May--MC Group
MC GROUP Public Company Limited (“MC”) announced its sales revenue of THB 892 mn for the first quarter of 2015 or a 4% increase from the same period last year. This sales growth was a result of MC’s strong commitment in expanding its sales network through its free standing shops as a key growth strategy. However, net profit dropped 6% to195 million baht amidst a slow recovery of domestic consumption.
Dr. Narumol Sinhaseni, Senior Executive Vice President - Finance and Business Support said “Sales channel expansion is still the key driver for our continuous growth in sales including this 4% growth from the same quarter last year. During this quarter, the Company added another 11 points of sales - 8 free standing shops, 2 locations in modern trade channel and 1 in foreign market. This was in line with our strategy that focuses on free standing shops to support our expansion in apparel and lifestyle product retail business and respond to changing consumer behavior. The contribution to overall sales revenue from free standing shops rose to 50% from 46% during the same period last year which is in accordance with our growth strategy.
Together with higher sales contribution from free standing shop, production line enhancement and effective cost control contributed to an increase in gross profit margin. However, sluggish recovery of private consumption still negatively affected the bottom line in the short term causing net profit margin to drop slightly from 23.6% to 21.4% in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same period last year. Higher selling expenses from sales network expansion and growing manpower to support future business growth adversely impacted the profitability while sales was still affected from weak domestic consumption. Efforts were put in cutting these expenses as well as boosting same store sales through product development and offering and product selections to match market demands. As an attempt to expand into lifestyle product business, we first offered travel luggage as its new product to respond to growing consumer trend of traveling in late March.”
Ms. Sunee Seripanu, CEO added “For 2015, MC emphasizes on fortifying our strengths of our foundations through new sales channel expansion locally and internationally. We premiered our first location in PTT gas station in April and signed a contract with a sales representative in Cambodia during the beginning of May. Another key strategy to be noted is constant product development and introduction to meet the needs of the consumers”