Financial Report

By Elka Malkis, Financial Manager

Sales for the 2nd quarter (October-December) of the fiscal year were $10,221,540. This is a 2% increase over the previous year. Store sales were down a little (1.8%), but Co-op Partners Warehouse sales were up a lot (11.6%). Our average daily customer count at the store has been up over last year for six of the last seven months but the average transaction has been on a reverse trend: slightly lower in six of the past seven months.

Our Cost of the Goods this quarter was 65.2% of sales, just ever so slightly off from last year's 65.1%. Cost of Goods is the amount we pay to suppliers for our products. The next largest expense is always payroll (wages, benefits, taxes), and that came to 22.8% of Sales this quarter. After paying suppliers and staff, we had 12 cents of every dollar spent here to pay all other costs.

One report I have been compiling lately looks at the average Income Statement for Co-ops with Quarterly Sales over $4 million (our sales are the highest of any in this group). For this group, the average Cost of Goods Sold was 62.3% and average payroll was 24.3%. With these numbers, the "average large co-op" would have 13.4 cents left to pay all other costs.

Compared to other large co-ops, our Building Expenses are quite low: only 2.2% of Sales. On average, other co-ops spent 4.3% on their Building Expenses. One reason why our costs are lower here is that we own our building and no longer carry a mortgage on it.

Operating expenses were 5.1% of Sales. This includes telephone, equipment repairs, credit card fees, store supplies and many more things. Our costs here are higher than the co-op average (3.9%), and that is because of expenses attributable to the Warehouse. Most other co-ops do not have trucking expenses, for example.

Admin, Governance and Promotions came to 3.7% of Sales. These include member discounts, the newsletter, CPA and legal fees, Board expenses, advertising, office supplies and food donated to the food shelves. The co-op average is 3.2%.

We paid $57,000 in estimated taxes which was .6% of Sales.

This quarter's profit is $345,179, or 3.4% of Sales. The average profit for other large co-ops was 1.4%.