Dollar General Corporation, an American chain of variety stores headquartered in Tennessee, has announced results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended February 3, 2017. In the fourth quarter, net sales increased by 13.7 per cent to US $ 6.0 billion in the 2016 fourth quarter compared to US $ 5.3 billion in the 2015 fourth quarter.
Same-store sales for Dollar General, which is planning to open 1,000 new stores in 2017, increased 1.0 per cent from the 2015 fourth quarter primarily due to an increase in average transaction amount, partially offset by a slight decline in traffic that moderated from the second and third quarters.
The net sales increase was positively affected by sales from new stores, modestly offset by sales from closed stores.
Full-year 2016 same-store sales zoomed 0.9 per cent due to an increase in average transaction amount accompanied by traffic that was essentially unchanged as compared to the prior year. Same-store sales were driven by positive results in the consumables and home products categories partially offset by negative results in the apparel and seasonal categories.
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The company’s gross profit rate was 30.8 per cent of sales in 2016 compared to 31.0 per cent in 2015, a decrease of 11 basis points.
“We are pleased with our fourth quarter 2016 financial results, and believe that during the quarter many of our initiatives continued to gain traction. For the year, we effectively managed through what proved to be a challenging retail environment to deliver same-store sales growth of 0.9 per cent,” said Todd Vasos, Dollar General’s Chief Executive Officer.
