ILM reported the Q1/2021 net profit of 145.4 million baht, an increase of 23.0% and 1.7% QoQ despite the second outbreak of COVID-19 since December 2020. Online and OEM sales continued to grow remarkably, while Younique Customized Furniture achieved its record quarterly sales since the business launch. Liquidity has been strong, with continuous prepayment of long-term loans. Inventories also continued to decrease. Despite the third outbreak of COVID-19 since the beginning of April 2021, the executive is confident that the Company will benefit from the work-from-home situation and generate sales growth accordingly.

Miss Kridchanok Patamasatayasonthi, Managing Director of Index Living Mall Public Company Limited (ILM), Thailand's leading integrated retailer of furniture and home furnishing products, revealed that despite the widespread of the second outbreak of COVID-19 since December 2020, net profit managed to grow YoY and QoQ. The Company recorded net profit in Q1/2021 of 145.4 million baht, an increase of 23.0% compared to the same quarter last year and an increase of 1.7% compared to the previous quarter. Total revenue in Q1/2021 was 2,146.7 million baht, decreased by 3.6% YoY but increased by 0.9% QoQ. However, with the Company's capability to reduce operating costs in every aspect effectively, decrease finance costs resulted from prepayment of long-term loans from financial institutions as well as lessening inventories continuously, which helped lower storage and handling costs, thus the Company could rent out the free space of the warehouse to a business partner and generate more rental income to the business. With all the efficient factors, the Company's profitability in Q1/2020 boosted healthily.

Miss Kridchanok further clarified that in the current situation where the third outbreak of COVID-19 occurred in Thailand since early April 2021, which was the most critical and most widespread than before, the government then released various measures to prevent the spread of the disease, which might impact the domestic economic recovery in Q2/2021. The Company, therefore, will continue to consider spending capital expenditures with caution as well as monitoring and assessing the situation thoroughly to resolve and mitigate the impact on the Company's business as much as possible. However, the Company is confident that it will also be able to create an opportunity to increase sales from the work-from-home situation where consumers tend to be more in need and interested in purchasing home office products. The behavior of people staying home longer and cooking at home should be in trend and add a positive effect on sales of furniture, home furnishings products, and kitchen electric appliances, while the Company has a wide variety of products to meet consumer behavior during this time. Also, the Company is already prepared to deal with the coming situations to enable the business to go through this difficult time again as it did before and ready to bounce back steadily when the situation returns to normal in the future. More positive factors should be in effect after the COVID-19 vaccines are widely distributed in the country in 2021 as targeted with collaboration from the government and private sector as well as the government's stimulus campaigns for both business and household sector to support the domestic economic recovery in the second half of this year, concluded Miss Kridchanok.