LJ Williams Ltd yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $275,000 for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 31, 2024, a 95.3 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $5.9 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

In the LJ Williams chair­man’s re­view, Law­ford Dupres, said the par­ent com­pa­ny had a slight de­cline in food and al­lied sales due to the im­pact of sup­pli­er price in­creas­es, which re­sult­ed in low­er sell through at its re­tail points. He said the com­pa­ny’s ship­ping di­vi­sion sales were mar­gin­al­ly low­er but with an im­proved prof­it

“The de­cline in dis­cre­tionary spend­ing af­fect­ed The Home Store as con­sumers spent main­ly on es­sen­tial items. Sales are low­er than last year de­spite a full year of sales from our Trinci­ty branch.

“Mar­gins were low­er as we ran more spe­cials to move our in­ven­to­ry. This con­tributed to The Home Store record­ing a loss, which af­fect­ed the Group’s prof­itabil­i­ty,” the the com­pa­ny’s chair­man added.

In the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor’s re­port, LJ Williams said the par­ent com­pa­ny in FY2024, start­ed to feel the full im­pact of sup­pli­er price in­creas­es and con­sumers re­duc­ing their spend­ing and fo­cus­ing more on es­sen­tial pur­chas­es.

“Our food di­vi­sion sales de­clined three per cent and sale pro­mo­tions to main­tain mar­ket share af­fect­ed prof­it. We have cut costs by re­duc­ing the num­ber of trade routes we ser­vice and tran­si­tion­ing our fleet from diesel to CNG. This will re­duce fleet cost and im­prove our green foot­print,” it said.

Shar­ing de­tails about The Home Store, the re­port said, “We had a dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial year 2024 with the econ­o­my stag­nant and con­sumers re­duc­ing their dis­cre­tionary spend­ing. We start­ed see­ing a drop off in sales from late 2022 and it ac­cel­er­at­ed in our fi­nal quar­ter of FY2024.”