Ace Hardware 2014 Sales, Profit Soar

The company's fourth quarter profit fell year-over-year, but a net increase of 80 stores helped boost sales and profit throughout the year.

Id 3478 Ace Hardware Logo Ld

Ace Hardware reported its 2014 fourth quarter and full year financials on Wednesday.

The company had Q4 sales of $1.16 billion, up 13.6 percent year-over-year. Net income for Q4 was $12.7 million, down from $23.4 million a year ago. The company said the decline was caused by increased store-level merchandise reset spending and additional markdowns to clear closeout inventory.

For the full year, Ace had fiscal 2014 sales of $4.7 billion, up 13.2 percent over 2013. Fiscal 2014 had one more selling week than 2013, but even without it, revenues still increased 12.0 percent. Net income for 2014 was $140.9 million, up 34.8 percent.

"My congratulations and thanks to the entire Ace team for delivering our best year ever, in the same year we celebrated our 90th anniversary," said John Venhuizen, President and CEO, Ace Hardware Corp. "Our founders would be delighted to see our patronage distribution to shareholders exceed $135 million, an increase of 34 percent and a record for the company."

The approximately 3,000 Ace retailers who share daily retail sales data had 4.7 percent same-store-sales increase for the fourth quarter of 2014. Same-store-sales at these stores were up 4.2 percent for all of fiscal 2014.

 

Ace added 201 new domestic stores in fiscal 2014 and cancelled 121 stores for a net increase in store count of 80. This brought the company’s total domestic store count to 4,251 at the end of 2014.

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