Pre-owned car dealer Jetcon Corporation seems set to expand its operations with the acquisition of an adjoining property to its 2 Sandringham Avenue, Kingston 10 base.

While the purchase price of the property has not been disclosed, Jetcon reports that its fixed assets for the third quarter ended September 2019 grew by $47 million, due mainly to the acquisition of the property.

This moved Jetcon’s fixed assets from $85.3 million in September 2018 to $132.86 million for the period under review.

The other main asset inventories declined, as Jetcon continued to work off excess inventories of motor vehicles.

For the quarter under review, Jetcon recorded a big 64 per cent rise in net profits of $21.5 million coming from $13 million for the same period in September 2018.

However, the year-to-date profit still lags behind the 2018 results, where profits then amounted to $93.5 million, but is now at $45.4 million.

The company enjoyed a major improvement in gross profit margin in the quarter that led to strong improvement in gross profit and net profit for the period. However, revenues for the quarter were down three per cent moving from $288 million in 2018 to $280 million for the September 2019 quarter.

For the nine months to September, revenues dropped 16 per cent to end at $746 million and gross profit declined 19 per cent to $125 million. Administrative and other costs increased by just three per cent in the quarter and eight per cent for the nine-month period.

OUTLOOK

Sales for October were ahead of the corresponding period in 2018. Jetcon’s management is “cautiously optimistic that the sales for the final quarter will exceed that of the 2018 quarter and help to add to the profit reported for the first nine months of the year”.

In its second quarter ended June 30, Jetcon made a meagre net profit of $8.67 million, reversing three years of solid growth for the company. Jetcon recorded a net profit of $34.71 million in the prior year.

Jetcon Managing Director Andrew Jackson attributed the reduced margin to the reduction in prices to move inventories during the first half of the year as a strategy by the management team to combat the downturn results.