Fastenal Q3 net sales increase 3.5%
Fastenal's September net sales increased 3.2% year over year, and for the third quarter, the company reported net sales increased 3.5% compared to the third quarter of 2023.The quarter's net daily sales increased 1.9% versus the same period in 2023.
"We estimate the disruption from Hurricane Helene to operations and logistics within our Southeast and Atlantic Coastal regions reduced our daily sales by 5 to 25 basis points in the third quarter of 2024," the company's third quarter earnings press release stated. "Changes in foreign exchange rates negatively affected sales in both the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2023 by approximately 10 basis points.
"An increase in unit sales in the third quarter of 2024 was primarily due to growth with larger customers and Onsite locations opened in the last two years. The impact of product pricing on net sales in the third quarter of 2024 was not material, in contrast to the third quarter of 2023, when the impact of product pricing was modestly positive. The pricing environment was stable throughout the third quarter of 2024."
September U.S. daily sales growth was 2.3% but represent 82.7% of the month's sales compared to 8.3 daily sales growth in Canada/Mexico, which represent 14.1% of September sales; Rest of World daily sales growth was 5.3% and was 3.2% of sales for the month.
The company's end market by percentage of September sales were: Heavy Manufacturing (42.4%), Other Manufacturing (32.2%), Non-residential Construction (8.8%), Reseller (5.2%), and Other End Markets (11.4%).
Daily sales growth of fasteners for the month was negative 3.3% and the product line was 30.1% of the month's sales. Safety daily sales growth was 7.5% and was 22.4% of sales, while Other products' daily sales growth was 5.9% and represented 47.5% of sales.
According to the press statement for the third quarter: "From a product standpoint, we have three categories: fasteners [including fasteners used in original equipment manufacturing (OEM) and maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO)], safety supplies, and other product lines, the latter of which includes eight smaller product categories, such as tools, janitorial supplies, and cutting tools. We continued to experience a divergence in the performance of our fastener versus our non-fastener product lines in the third quarter of 2024, which we believe primarily relates to two factors. First, fasteners are more heavily oriented toward production of final goods than maintenance, which results in greater susceptibility to periods of weaker industrial production. Second, we continued to experience relatively faster growth with warehousing customers due to market share gains and product mix, which primarily benefits our safety product line."
INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY MAGAZINE
The September/October issue of Industrial Supply magazine features an in-depth cover story about Kurz Industrial Solutions. Plus, we're featuring articles by contributing writers Dirk Beveridge, Frank Hurtte, and Mike Hockett, as well as interviews with numerous product and distribution industry experts.
