De­spite a con­tin­ued de­cline in sales, con­sol­i­dat­ing The Home Store’s op­er­a­tions has helped LJ Williams min­imise loss­es for the first quar­ter of fi­nan­cial year 2026.

In the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the quar­ter end­ed June 30, 2026, the com­pa­ny re­port­ed a loss af­ter tax of $336,000 which rep­re­sent­ed an im­prove­ment over the loss of $1.25 mil­lion re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

LJ Williams chair­man Law­ford Dupres stat­ed, “Group sales for the quar­ter were $32.6 mil­lion com­pared to $34.2 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous year, a 4.6 per cent de­cline due to the clo­sure of The Home Store out­lets. How­ev­er, these clo­sures im­proved our op­er­at­ing mar­gins and con­tributed to re­duc­ing the Group loss be­fore tax to $0.15 mil­lion com­pared to a loss of $1.07 mil­lion in the first quar­ter of fi­nan­cial year 2026.”

Dupres ex­plained, “The clo­sure of the Ch­agua­nas branch con­tributed to an im­proved Home Store per­for­mance this quar­ter. In ad­di­tion, we have now com­plet­ed the move from the Ma­coya ware­house con­sol­i­dat­ing op­er­a­tions in Barataria. This move will re­duce op­er­at­ing costs and we ex­pect to see steady im­prove­ment to the end of this fi­nan­cial year.”

Dupres said the group’s food and al­lled di­vi­sion sales were three per cent above the com­par­a­tive first quar­ter with im­proved mar­gins while the hard­ware di­vi­sion per­formed bet­ter in the cur­rent quar­ter over last with sales im­prov­ing by 10 per cent. He al­so said the group’s ship­ping di­vi­sion was trend­ing well and ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue in the sec­ond quar­ter.

Dupres said the com­pa­ny’s first quar­ter sales in Guyana were im­pact­ed by late ar­rival of ship­ments.

He said, “We have tak­en steps to cor­rect the lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues in ship­ping to Guyana to en­sure our out­lets re­main well stocked for the peak sea­son.”

Dupres was con­fi­dent the re­struc­tur­ing of The Home Store has led to im­proved re­sults and the com­pa­ny ex­pects its op­er­a­tions to re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty in the 2027 fi­nan­cial year.

In the com­pa­ny’s re­port for fi­nan­cial year 2026 which was re­leased ear­li­er in June, the com­pa­ny list­ed a loss of $2.27 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 31, 2026. In 2025, the com­pa­ny re­port­ed a loss of $2.8 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od.