The first quarter was a challenging one for Dollar General as consumers turned their spending to consumables and cut back on other product categories.
Net income in the quarter was $514.4 million, or $2.34 per diluted share, the company reported, versus $552.7 million, or $2.41 per diluted share, in the year-before period.
An analyst consensus estimate published by Yahoo Finance called for earnings of $2.38 per diluted share on revenues of $9.46 billion.
Comparable sales increased by 1.6%, Dollar General maintained. Comps included growth in the consumables category, partially offset by declines in each of the seasonal, home and apparel categories.
Net sales were $9.34 billion versus $8.75 billion in the year-earlier quarter, the company noted. Operating profit was $740.9 million versus $746.2 million in the year-prior period.
By category, sales gained 8.9% in consumables and 0.1% in seasonal but declined 1.6% in home products and 8.1% in apparel in the quarter year over year.
In announcing the first quarter results, Jeff Owen, Dollar General’s CEO, said, “While the macroeconomic environment has been more challenging than expected, particularly for our core customer, we are confident in Dollar General’s ability to deliver strong growth in the years ahead, despite the near-term pressure which impacted our first quarter sales results and is anticipated to impact our full-year sales and EPS. We are controlling what we can control and have made significant progress improving our execution on multiple fronts, including on our supply chain recovery efforts and enhancements to the customer experience with our previously announced investment in incremental labor hours. In addition, we executed more than 800 real estate projects, including new store openings in our larger footprint Dollar General formats, which continue to outperform our expectations, and drive higher sales productivity compared to our traditional stores.”
