PriceSmart offers unconventional reason for comp decline

It’s been quite common of late to hear retailers cite warm weather and intense competition as sources of sales weakness, but the prize for originality goes to PriceSmart after the warehouse club operator reported a January same-store sales decline.



The San Diego-based operator of 38 clubs throughout Latin American and the Caribbean said same store sales for the four week period ended Jan. 31, decreased 0.3%. Warm weather wasn’t to blame for the decline given the location of the 35 clubs in the same-store sales base, but the company’s exposure to Colombia caused a different type of problem.



PriceSmart operates six clubs in Colombia, five of which are included in the comp calculation, so when the government there devalued the Peso it had an outsized impact on the reported results. Excluding the five comp locations, PriceSmart said its same-store sales increased a respectable 4.1% during January and 4.5% during the 21 weeks ended Jan. 31.



Total sales for the month of January increased 3.3% to $226.4 million from $219.2 million thanks to the addition of two clubs. For the five months ended Jan. 31, sales increased 6.3% to $1.24 billion.



In addition to a total of six locations in Colombia, PriceSmart operates six clubs in Costa Rica, five in Panama, four in Trinidad, three each in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Honduras, two each in El Salvador and Nicaragua and one each in Aruba, Barbados, Jamaica and the United States Virgin Islands.