Fastenal Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
April 13, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Fastenal delivered a strong operational quarter with 12.4% daily sales growth (third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth), expanded key-account contracts ~8% to ~3,600, and improved operating margin to 20.3% driven by SG&A leverage.
  • Negative Sentiment: Tariff- and supplier-driven cost increases outpaced pricing in Q1, leaving the company roughly 40 basis points below its gross-margin target and noting that pricing actions were slower than expected, creating near-term margin headwinds until mid-year.
  • Positive Sentiment: Digital and FMI adoption accelerated—digital channels were 61.5% of sales, FMI accounted for ~45% of Q1 sales after adding ~7,000 new device agreements, which management says increases customer stickiness and supports profitable growth.
  • Positive Sentiment: Cash generation and capital allocation remain strong with operating cash flow of about $378M (111% of net income), full‑year CapEx guidance of ~$320M to fund hubs/FMI/automation, and $296M returned to shareholders (87% of net income) alongside modest buybacks.
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Earnings Conference Call
Fastenal Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Fastenal 2026 Q1 Earnings Results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Dray Schreiber. Dray, thank you. You may begin.

Dray Schreiber
Dray Schreiber
Accounting Manager at Fastenal

Welcome to the Fastenal Company 2026 first quarter earnings conference call. This call will be hosted by Dan Florness, our Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Watts, our President and Chief Sales Officer, and Max Tunnicliff, our Chief Financial Officer. This call will last for up to one hour and will start with a general overview of our quarterly results and operations, with the remainder of the time being open for questions and answers. Today's conference call is a proprietary Fastenal presentation and is being recorded by Fastenal. No recording, reproduction, transmission, or distribution of today's call is permitted without Fastenal's consent. This call is being audio simulcast on the internet via the Fastenal Investor Relations homepage, investor.fastenal.com. A replay of the webcast will be available on the website until June 1st, 2026, at midnight Central Time.

Dray Schreiber
Dray Schreiber
Accounting Manager at Fastenal

As a reminder, today's conference call may include statements regarding the company's future plans and prospects. These statements are based on our current expectations, and we undertake no duty to update them. It is important to note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from anticipated results are contained in the company's latest earnings release in periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and we encourage you to review those factors carefully. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jeff Watts.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Fastenal's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Jeff Watts, President and Chief Sales Officer, and before diving into the results, I want to take a moment to thank our entire Fastenal Blue Team across the world for their exceptional work driving the strong performance you're going to hear about today. I also want to highlight a real success that just happened. It was our recent Customer Expo where we hosted over 3,000 customers from around the globe. The turnout and engagement, it was just outstanding. We showcased our latest solutions, FMI technology and digital tools. What really made it successful was the quality of conversations and the strategic partnerships that were being formed and that were being strengthened. Events like these really demonstrate why we keep gaining market share. We help customers improve their efficiency.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

We help them improve their productivity, while becoming a trusted partner. Overall, like I said, it was just a great event and one of our best ones yet. Moving into the quarter, slide three. Q1 was a very strong quarter and a great start to the year. We delivered 12.4% daily sales growth, our third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Now, what's important is where this came from. Industrial economy remains somewhat challenging with U.S. manufacturing PMI averaging around 52.6, which is an improvement but still moderate overall. We really didn't see much of a tailwind. We gained share through focused execution. Largely, we won new business with key accounts. We expanded customer site presence, and we strengthened our value-added services and solutions. This performance was really powered by our three strategic drivers, the first being increasing sales effectiveness. We're winning with key accounts and new contracts.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

We added a healthy number of new national account contracts in the quarter, keeping us on track for a goal of roughly 250 new signings this year. Our total contract count grew by almost 8% year-over-year to just over 3,600 contracts, and about 75% of our Q1 sales came from these customers, which today we're deeply embedded with. When we look at our customer site spending, $50,000+ per month, they increased 16.3% year-over-year to just over 2,900 sites. At 21% revenue growth, these sites now account for just over half our total sales. Our approach to enhancing our services is aligned with our strategic commitment to addressing the specific needs of our larger customers, rather than just focusing on a one-size-fits-all approach.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

By focusing more on our $10,000-$50,000+ sites, it enables us to have greater direct integration within their facilities, deeper insights to deliver better solutions to fit their needs. Now, this targeted focus really allows us to implement and develop, deliver more tailored solutions to all of our customers, regardless of their size. Kind of think of it like a trickle-down effect. Smaller customers may not need all of our solutions, will be able to take advantage of the pieces where and when they need them. Now, the impact of this approach can really be seen in our average monthly sales per our $50,000+ sites. Not only are we adding new sites, but we're selling more to them as we increase the average monthly sales by $5,700 per site per month.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

Now lastly, expanding our markets. As our international sales teams have become increasingly more aligned, their growth continues to accelerate. Now in March, the international business, primarily Europe and Asia, grew almost 24%. Even though today they're a smaller piece of the pie, this performance is exactly what we want to see as we continue to invest in our global expansion. After speaking with just so many customers last week from different parts of the world, one thing is very clear, our solutions, our local presence, and our supply chains are definitely in high demand, and it's really why our growth internationally is so important to our future. Tying this all together financially, our daily sales increased 12.4% to $34.9 million per day for the quarter, and our operating margin improved to 20.3%, up 20 basis points from last year.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

That improvement was primarily the result of strong leverage of the SG&A expenses, which now I believe reflects our disciplined approach to managing costs, even as we continue to invest in our strategic growth drivers. Now moving on to slide four. In the first quarter, our digital initiatives continued to gain momentum with our Digital Footprint daily sales up 13.6%, outpacing overall company growth. As a result, digital channels represented 61.5% of the quarter's sales, and we remain on track to reach our digital mix goals by the end of the year. We also accelerated the deployment of our FMI, or Fastenal Managed Inventory technology. In the quarter, we signed close to 7,000 new FMI device agreements, about 110 per day, an 8% increase over last year.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

Now, this helped expand our active device base by nearly 6% and drove almost 45% of our Q1 sales through FMI, which is up 150 basis points over last year. In short, more customers are using our on-site devices and solutions to manage inventory, which makes Fastenal a stickier and more efficient supply chain partner. Meanwhile, our eBusiness grew daily sales nicely, up almost 7% over last year. Electronic transactions account for close to 30% of our total sales, and we do anticipate digital adoption to continue to rise as more and more customers integrate their procurement systems with Fastenal. Now, our investments in technology are delivering measurable results. By expanding our Digital Footprint through FMI and e-commerce, we're winning new business and we're driving profitable growth. Now I think our priorities here are very clear.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

We continue to invest in tools and technology and analytics to drive operational excellence and deepen our customer relationships. The strength of our first quarter reflects our strategic focus. We're winning with large strategic customers. We're embedding ourselves deeper through technology and service, and doing it with financial discipline that drives both top-line growth and bottom-line leverage. With that, I'll turn the call over to Max, who will walk through the financials in more detail. Max?

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Overall, the quarter showed continuous progress against our strategy. We saw improving demand, solid execution across the business, and strong cash generation, even as the broader macro environment remains uneven and, in some areas, uncertain. I'll start on the business trends and market drivers slide five. During the first quarter, the industrial environment showed signs of stabilizing. U.S. PMI averaged about or above 52 for the quarter, and industrial production was slightly positive year-over-year in January and February. This lines up with the gradual improvement we began to see late last year. As Jeff mentioned, our daily sales growth trends on a quarterly basis improved to 12.4% for the quarter from just over 11% in the fourth quarter of last year, and we continue to outperform the market.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

This growth was driven by a combination of new customer wins, increased share of wallet with existing customers, and pricing. Importantly, the market was not concentrated in any single customer type or end market. Customer sentiment remained generally favorable throughout the quarter. While trade and tariff uncertainty continues to be part of the backdrop, most customers are viewing this uncertainty primarily as a cost and planning issue rather than a demand issue. As a result, activity levels remained healthy, and we continue to see solid engagement across our customer base. From an end market perspective, growth was broad-based. Manufacturing activity remains solid, particularly in heavy manufacturing, which continues to benefit from our fastener expansion and momentum in key accounts. Heavy manufacturing represented 44% of total sales. Average daily sales growth in that segment was near the mid-teens, consistent with what we saw in the fourth quarter of last year.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Construction saw 17% growth, marking a strong turnaround from previous quarters. This increase was widespread, with both large national contractors and regional firms benefiting, and activity rising across key metro areas, especially in markets with infrastructure and commercial development. We also saw jumps from other non-manufacturing end markets, including transportation, warehousing, data centers, and other industrial services, as demand improved across a range of customer types. Across materials, both direct and indirect categories grew in the low to mid-teens. Direct materials slightly outpaced indirect, supported by higher fastener penetration, improved product availability, and pricing actions. Categories like hydraulics/pneumatics, welding/abrasives, and material handling also outperformed the company average, reflecting improving underlying activity levels. Overall, while the macro environment remains unpredictable, our diverse customer base, focus on key accounts, and ongoing strategic initiatives allowed us to capture growth opportunities and continue to strengthen our market position.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Turning now to slide six, margin performance and drivers. We were approximately 40 basis points below our own Q1 gross margin target, as pricing actions did not keep up with cost increases as the quarter played out. As a reminder, we said in our previous earnings call that roughly 50 basis points of margin pressure within Q4 was timing related and should be added back into our run rate, and that played out as we had expected. You may recall that these items related to timing of inventory, related working capital, and supplier rebates. What impacted us this quarter, Q1, was pricing versus cost. Tariff-related costs moved through the P&L faster than our pricing, leaving us, as I said, approximately 40 basis points short of our own target and 50 basis points year-over-year.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

On pricing, we realized approximately 3.5% year-over-year, and that compares to 3.3% in the fourth quarter, not enough to offset inflation. While our pricing execution progressed during the quarter, we did not move quickly enough, related mostly because of tariffs and some other items. As you can imagine, tariff uncertainty added additional challenges. In many cases, customer conversations and pricing actions took longer than usual as customers worked through their own planning assumptions. In others, these conversations were delayed as customers and suppliers await further direction on tariff changes and potential refunds. Importantly, we remain focused on maintaining pricing discipline over time, and we focus on continuing to manage toward price-cost neutrality. We also experienced smaller headwinds from fuel and transportation costs and customer rebates during the quarter.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Customer mix remained a structural headwind to gross margin, as growth skewed toward larger customers that typically carry lower margins on the growth side. However, these accounts are positive to operating margin due to strong fixed cost leverage, higher volumes, and improved operating efficiency. We continue to be comfortable with this trade-off given the long-term value of these relationships, and we continue to see the net positive impacts on our P&L. Fastener expansion benefits continue to provide a partial offset to gross margin pressure. As expected, these benefits will anniversary early in the second quarter while we continue to pursue additional sourcing, pricing, and productive opportunities across the business. As a reminder, our fastener expansion project did a number of things. It helped us capture higher margin business, and it drove cost savings initiatives. At the operating margin line, performance improved year-over-year.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

SG&A declined to 24.3% of sales compared to 25% in the same quarter last year, reflecting continued cost discipline and leverage. Importantly, we more than offset the reload of incentive compensation as well as our ongoing investments in tech, analytics, and sales support. In addition to our strong sales growth and cost management, we increased our return on invested capital by 180 basis points on a trailing 12-month basis, which shows our continued approach to capital allocation and maximizing asset productivity. In total, our P&L performance shows that we can invest for growth while maintaining a sharp focus on profits, even as our mix evolves and we pursue larger, more complex accounts. Turning to the cash flow and capital allocation slide. Operating cash flow was approximately $378 million, representing 111% of net income.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Cash generation remained strong even as we added working capital to support growth. Accounts receivable reflects our expanding customer base and growth with existing customers. Our inventory levels show increasing efficiencies as we continue to find opportunities to optimize inventory while maintaining high availability to meet our customers' needs. Accounts payable increased more than inventory, primarily as a result of some timing items associated with both inventory and non-inventory payments. Net capital spending for the first quarter was approximately $58 million, with investments focused on strengthening our hub and automation capacity, Fastenal Managed Inventory hardware capabilities, and advancing our IT infrastructure. For full year 2026, we continue to expect net CapEx of approximately $320 million as we invest in hub capacity, FMI devices, automation, and technology. These investments are designed to drive efficiency, stability, and customer value.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

To provide context, our average capital spending relative to sales over the last five years was about 2.5%, compared to roughly 4% in the preceding 10-year period, meaning that we go through periods of different investment run rates. As we mentioned last quarter, 2026 is a year in which we will invest the higher end of our historical range. If you compare our 2026 estimate to the consensus revenue estimate for full year 2026, our capital expenditure range approximates 3.5% of net sales, reflecting our continued focus on investing to grow our business. We returned $296 million to shareholders during the quarter through dividends and a small amount of share repurchases, which offset dilution. These totaled 87% of net income, reflecting our confidence in cash generation and our commitment to returning value to shareholders.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Our capital allocation approach remains unchanged. We prioritize investing in the business where we see strong returns while returning excess cash to shareholders and maintaining a conservatively capitalized balance sheet. In closing, I'll just summarize my slides before turning it to Dan. The first quarter reflected steady execution across the business. We delivered strong sales growth, disciplined cost management, and solid cash generation. Operating margin expanded year-on-year despite higher bonuses and continued investments, demonstrating strong SG&A leverage within our P&L. This reflects our ability to effectively manage cost while supporting growth. We continue to improve our return metrics, which we believe reflect the strength and durability of our business model. That wraps up my section. Thank you, and I'll turn it over to Dan.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Thanks, Max, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our earnings call. I'm on page eight of the flip book. From a market outlook standpoint, first off, as we talked about in January, we've seen some improvements in what the market is willing to give us versus create obstacles for us, although they're only now starting to be realized. After being at Fastenal for 30 years, blue was always my favorite color. It's become even more so in the last 30 years, and despite the fact I'm from Wisconsin, red is not high on my list of favorite colors. If you look at the Purchasing Managers' Index, we have an internal grid that we've shared in the past at our Annual Meeting, where we look at it in any month where the ISM is below 50, we color that month red.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

If you look at the last decade or so, you don't see much red on it until the last three years, and it was pretty constant. In fact, it was every month constant. We've had three months now where we're above 50. That generally gives us confidence in what we're going to be seeing three and four months out. From that standpoint, our outlook is positive. The other thing for me personally that stands out when I look at this quarter is, over the last six or so years, we really changed the focus of Fastenal and kept diving into being a supply chain partner to support businesses. Really, ever since we started, one of the things that struggled as we were changing our format, our public go-to-market, was our non-res construction business really suffered.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

If I think of it coming out of COVID, it was growing in the mid-single digits. In that 2023-2024 timeframe, it was actually negative mid-single digits. Through 2025, it grew about 4%. We exited the year growing almost 10%. In the first quarter, that business is growing 17%. Now, that's only 8% of our revenue, so I don't want to overstate it, but it tells me a great supply chain partner is relevant to every industry that's out there, and that we are that partner, and we can get traction in any end market. All we have to do is understand that end market, and frankly, that end market has to understand why Fastenal can be special for their business, really exciting to see. The second bullet in the market outlook talks about ongoing focus on price neutrality and managing tariff impacts.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

One of the things we touched on in January is a wave of cost we saw coming in late last year and early part of this year. In some ways, it relates to tariffs, but I'm not sure if it does. It was our branded suppliers. Branded suppliers have a unique market power in that if a customer wants Brand X, that supplier can push pretty hard and say, Hey, here's where the cost is, and we will share that with the end customer to really allow them to make the decision. Do you want Brand X at this price? Do you want Brand Y at maybe a different price? The branded suppliers have been very aggressively, in the last six, seven months, raising costs. Some of it, I'm sure, is related to tariffs. Maybe they're doing some catch-up.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Some of it's maybe related to true inflation. There's some commodities right now, if you're trying to source nitrile gloves, good luck, because the cost of that has gone through the roof in the last 60 days as a result of what's going on in the Middle East. What we're really aggressively doing in the marketplace is arming our customers and our teams with information to make trade-offs. We're arming them with, here's examples of brand X has raised the cost of their product by 6%, 7%, 8%. Maybe it's well-defined, maybe it's a kind of a generic spread-across-everything type cost increase. Our job, and one of the conversations we had with our team early this morning, is I really challenge them from the standpoint of what I've seen from this group in the decade that I've been in this role.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

When this group needs to rise to the occasion and have communications, sometimes discussions that are challenging, that's what we're good at, because that's being bluntly honest with your business partners. We're having some of those conversations right now, and those conversations were really challenged in the first quarter, partly challenged because of uncertainty around what the Supreme Court was going to rule as it relates to tariff, partly challenged by, frankly, fatigue of the last 12 months of the pricing actions that have been happening as supply chains have become more costly. The real challenge to the group is we need to have those tough discussions every day. Sometimes it's about price, sometimes it's about changing product, sometimes it's about changing from brand X to brand Y, and get through this with our customer. Moving on to the second item, financial discipline.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

This organization never ceases to impress me on their ability to perform. I am really impressed with the strong cash generation in the first quarter. Max touched on that. Our capital allocation will always be focused on growth of the business, infrastructure to support that growth, technology to support the efficiency of our teams, and the information available for our customers, and ultimately, strong shareholder returns. To that extent, our ROIC came in at 31% on a trailing 12-month basis, a nice improvement over where it was a year ago, and a nice improvement over where it's been for the last decade.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

From an organizational priorities, I touched on this a second ago, but we'll continue to invest in supporting the future of our business and our customer with an eye towards technology investments that enhance our ability to be more efficient. You saw that play out in our SG&A this quarter. Despite the fact this is our final quarter of reloading bonuses, because we reward heavily driven based on earnings growth, and that ramped up dramatically Q2 of last year. We've now anniversaried that going into Q2 of this year.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

It's also about being more efficient. That puts us in a position to do special things for our customers without wearing out our teams and being able to reward those teams appropriately. Strategic progress, as Jeff mentioned, our key account strategy is performing really well. New contract wins are strong. We continue to expand our FMI technology deeper and deeper into our customer supply chains. We find success in a wide range of industries, and one thing that shouldn't be lost on anybody looking at that table on page three of our earnings release, where we look at customer sites and sales segmentation.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

We have really strong growth with our customer groups. Interestingly enough, even though manufacturing is 75% of our revenue, from a percentage standpoint, we're actually seeing stronger growth in the non-manufacturing from the pure number of customers doing $50,000+, because while the company might have grown at 16%, our non-manufacturing customers grew at 25%. We're discovering success across a wide range of industries, a wide range of geographies. With that, we'll turn it over to Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. We kindly ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Our first questions come from the line of David Manthey with Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

David Manthey
David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Dave.

David Manthey
David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

First question. When you say pricing actions will continue at a slower pace, the two questions on that, one, does that imply sequential gains of this sort of 20 basis points or less sequentially quarter-to-quarter from here, or should we expect that to accelerate? Number two, if the first quarter of 2025 we're kind of using as a baseline, I think you talked about 5%-8% ultimately. Is that still the case? When would you expect to achieve price-cost neutrality?

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Dave, this is Max. I'll take the first part. Because we continue to drive price actions, this doesn't stop, and we were behind where we wanted to be in Q1, those actions will continue. Although we're not guiding toward a Q2, we would do everything in our power to not see the same sequential move from Q1 to Q2. You can start at that as a starting point, but it's in our ability to change that trajectory. I think that would come with just our statements from our prepared remarks that, as Dan said, we've got a team that knows how to overcome some challenges. Could you repeat the second part of your question, please?

David Manthey
David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

Yeah. I was wondering about the baseline. I know there's been changes in the tariff landscape, but you originally were saying sort of 5%-8% would be the peak level of pricing that you would see. I'm also wondering, number one, is that still the case? Number two, when would you expect to achieve price cost neutrality if it's that 5%-8% or if it's something less today?

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Yeah. We don't have a reason to believe that that estimate changes. I think IEEPA gets replaced essentially by 122. In the timing, we feel like around mid-year-ish, we're going to start to see some of that plateau. We feel like we got a good estimate on that part. We just have work to do to make up for some of the traction that we lost through Q1. Again, a timing item. What we can't tell you is when we recover that, but we're going after it.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Hey, David. You might notice a little trepidation on our part to answer. We probably over-answered in January a little bit and underestimated what it would be like to push a string through Q1. It's been a slug or a slog, excuse me. Maybe a slug, too. The 5%-8%, that's a cumulative number. That's not a quarter-over-quarter. As we're anniversarying, we go into Q2, that will eat some into that. What we report on a year-over-year might not be that 5%-8%, but it's a cumulative piece.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

The real challenge we have with our folks is we need to have conversations with our customers. We have customers that had business that turned on at different points in time. It might be some new business that turned on and the facts have changed. It's always guiding that customer to what is happening with their supply chain and how we can address that. Sometimes it's substitution, sometimes it's price changes. It's being candid with your customer.

David Manthey
David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

Got it. Okay. As it relates to the improvement you're seeing, in the past, Fastenal has tried to ramp headcount in anticipation or concurrent with an improving macro backdrop. I'm just wondering, should we expect a similar ramp if the backdrop continues to gain strength for you this time, or is there something different this time around?

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

I'll throw out a piece and then Jeff and Max, correct me on what I mess up on, but I think we've really developed some nice efficiencies. We've gotten really focused on identifying role specificity within our network. I think our teams really have good capacity built in. One of the things we've done in the last several years, coming out of COVID, one part of our employee ranks that really were hollowed out was the part-time ranks. Because when schools go remote, it's hard to find that, and it really dropped off.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

We've reloaded that portion, and what that is always about is our local district leaders having conversations to understand who in their team is ready to step up and take that next opportunity on business that's turning on. Because everybody looking out and saying, "What business is turning on?" because that's where the biggest need for headcount is. It isn't always on that customer. That business is up 5% or 10% because we've taken on some new products. We're really efficient at turning that kind of business on locally. I don't know, Jeff, if you want to add anything to that.

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

Yeah, I would just say that the technology and solutions we're adding and also our customer mix, we're making them more efficient, we're also making ourselves more efficient. Going back in the past, if you looked at our ramp-up in revenue and then our ramp-up in headcount, I don't think that same number correlates today as it did back then, especially with all the technology we have and efficiencies that we're adding in. I think that's part of the reason our SG&A leverage is so good.

David Manthey
David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

I appreciate that. Thanks.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Just as a follow-on to that, Dave, as you can imagine, we know where we need to add. We feel pretty comfortable because there's a lot of pluses and minuses, meaning we have a lot of reasons, efficiency gains, and then we know where we want to plug to drive some further growth. What you're seeing in the P&L in Q1 from leverage should be an expectation. We should be able to continue in that general trajectory.

David Manthey
David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

All right.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please proceed with your questions.

Ryan Merkel
Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head of Industrials at William Blair

Everyone, thanks for the question. I want to start off on the topic of pricing and being slower to pass that on to customers. My question is, what are you doing to fix this issue, because this is the second time in the past year that we're dealing with this? Yeah. Thanks.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Well, first off, I'm pleased to say it's only the second time because our goal has never been to be great at adjusting prices. Our goal is to be really great at informing our customer of what's happening in their supply chain. With the chaos of the last 12 months or more, maybe that's a win. The biggest thing is really fine-tuning some of the things we're doing and quantifying it.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

I was on a conversation this morning, and Kevin Fitzgerald is the individual in the organization who leads our analytics team, and he was going through with our regional leaders some very specific outcomes that are needed from pricing actions we're doing. It's really dividing and conquering a little bit of saying, here's where you have some flexibility, and frankly, here's where we don't. I think it's like anything, when you get pushed against the wall a little bit, you push back. I don't know, Jeff or Max, you want to add anything to that?

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

No, I think it's good.

Ryan Merkel
Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head of Industrials at William Blair

Okay. Thanks for that. Look, I appreciate it. It's difficult. It's a unique environment for pricing. I had a follow-up to Dave's question. I guess, are you seeing suppliers continuing to push pricing? Do you expect higher inflation because of oil?

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Yes.

Ryan Merkel
Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head of Industrials at William Blair

Okay.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

That's a really broad answer.

Ryan Merkel
Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head of Industrials at William Blair

Are you seeing that pricing increase or are you expecting it?

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Well, I mentioned it in my commentary about nitrile gloves. That's not the biggest product line we sell, but it's a meaningful product line that we sell. That price is going crazy because it's all petroleum-based. It really depends on what energy or petroleum content there is in a product that directly moves it. There you're seeing percentages that make some of these tariff percentages we've talked about in recent years look small. Again, it's a very small, I don't want to overstate a smaller category, but it's just an example.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

As you can imagine, it's just so volatile. On a typical year, sitting here in a Q1, we at least internally know that we've had 99% of the supplier increases, if they're coming, come through, but this is just unusual times.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

I think our biggest challenge, Ryan, in a time like this, and I'm thinking of our supply chain teams more so than our discussions necessarily with our customer, our supply chain teams of knowing where you push back and how aggressively you push back from the standpoint of, we understand the cost components of products we source for our customers, and we can share that understanding with our customers. Where there's a commodity that's going up and it's linked to tariffs, or it's linked to energy prices, we can assess really quickly if that's real or if it's BS. That determines how much you push back.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Part of it is the art of how much you push back, and then once you find the pieces that are truly legitimate of acknowledging that that portion of the supply chain has become more expensive and conveying that to your customer. Because we're not delivering a unique message to our customer because they're seeing in a lot of commodities or a lot of items they're sourcing outside of the Fastenal universe, too.

Ryan Merkel
Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head of Industrials at William Blair

Okay. All right, guys, very helpful. Pass it on. Good luck.

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.

Stephen Volkmann
Stephen Volkmann
Managing Director and Industrials Research Analyst at Jefferies

Great. Good morning, guys. Thanks. I'm not going to ask about tariffs and pricing, but let's maybe shift to the growth side of the equation. It sounds like, Max, from your commentary around end markets, that growth is sort of broadening out. I don't want to put too many words in your mouth, but are you expecting sort of growth to continue to accelerate? We do have a little bit tougher comp in the second quarter. Just how should we think about the growth side going forward?

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

Well, I'll take that, Max. I see you looking over my way. I think it's hard to tell right now with everything going on. I haven't checked the news this morning, but we're still cautiously optimistic about the growth continuing. We're seeing that across the board. We haven't seen any pullback. In fact, we don't like to give guidance, but if you look at our April numbers, that market's continuing to expand, our market. Overall, it's hard to say what the rest of the year is going to look like, but right now we're, like I said, cautiously optimistic.

Stephen Volkmann
Stephen Volkmann
Managing Director and Industrials Research Analyst at Jefferies

Okay. Thank you.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

I'll add one piece on there, and it's a data point we put in our monthly sales release, and that is the percentage of our locations that are growing. There's always something somewhere where a customer is down or a group of customers are down. I know I was watching our regional leaders pull together videos for our Board each quarter, and we'll have two or three. One of them I was watching this weekend. This individual is leading a mature part of our business in the Central United States, and he was talking about what's happening in his overall business. He was also talking about two customers, his two largest customers, who are down 20%. There's always specific reasons with customers. When I look at the percentage of our locations growing, that's been stuck in the mid-60s, and that's a good place.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

That's been in the mid-60s consistently now since last fall. Whereas a year ago or more, that was probably down in the low 60s or upper 50s. The closer that is to 70, life just gets a lot easier because you're seeing broad-based support from a geographic standpoint, which typically translates into from an end market standpoint as well.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Stephen, let me just add one more quick point. If you break down essentially our DSR, as you know, run rates, and you're an analyst, you'll know that we're coming up on some headwinds from a pricing perspective when we comp the prior year. We are very confident in our share gain opportunities because we believe we have great business in that space. Internally, we expect share gains to continue as they are, to increase. At the same time, when you model out, everyone's thinking about pricing as well. We started pricing in Q2 of last year, and so we're going to start to encounter a little bit of a comp item on the top line in that regard. Of course, it doesn't impact operating profit because our pricing mechanics were there to offset cost increases. Just keep that in mind.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

The one thing I've always counseled over the years is focus on the sequential patterns of the business. Jeff talked about the fact that we're having really strong customer acquisition patterns, and despite the fact that we're adding customers at a rapid clip, that historically would pull down our dollars per customer a little bit because the newer customers aren't as mature as the existing customers. That's not what's happening. We're adding customers at a very rapid pace, but we're also adding wallet share at the same time, and our ultimate number is expanding, and Jeff touched on that in his commentary earlier. That makes me more bullish on what the future looks like because the economy is going to give or take what it gives or take. What we take from others and from a standpoint of market share gains, those are just pure wins.

Stephen Volkmann
Stephen Volkmann
Managing Director and Industrials Research Analyst at Jefferies

Great. That's great color. I appreciate that. Dan, you mentioned slog or slug when you have these customer kinds of conversations. I'm curious though, are there competitors out there that are kind of not raising prices as they should? Is anyone doing anything competitively that's kind of holding this back?

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

We're all swimming in the same water, and that water has a current to it, and that water has become more expensive. That's a really lousy analogy. Sorry about that. We're all impacted by the same economics. Are there examples where a competitor might get really aggressive with a customer circumstance? That's always true, and there's some of that. I think by and large our industry is a rational industry. The only time you see weird things, I was recently traveling in Indiana. There was a long-term competitor that it wasn't that they were doing anything irrational, it was their business is really struggling.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

You see some signs of that of when organizations get squeezed too much, you see some competitors that either disappear or they have to downsize their operations. I saw some of that. Again, one data point is on a recent trip down to Indiana, but I don't think there's anything irrational going on. That doesn't mean we don't have circumstances where somebody's trying to elbow out somebody else in a customer situation. That's the exception, not the rule.

Stephen Volkmann
Stephen Volkmann
Managing Director and Industrials Research Analyst at Jefferies

Thank you, guys.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your questions.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Thanks. Good morning.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Morning.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Just wanted to turn attention to the tariffs. How do we think about all the changes to IEEPA Section 122, the changes to Section 232 tariffs? Just how does that shake out for Fastenal?

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Yeah, Nigel, if we think first of IEEPA, which is making the most noise, we've said in the past that that's a much smaller portion of the total tariff landscape for us. Those, because they're largely replaced by 122 anyway, we don't see much activity within our P&L to speak to on that one. Even the refund noise, once again, it's a very small amount of our total business and our total tariffs. From our vantage point, it's not immaterial simply because it creates so much noise and it creates, as we said, the slog of pricing. Part of that slog is driven by the uncertainties in tariffs. I hope that gives you the context.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

The point Max just made about the impact, it's the headline impact. When the Supreme Court ruling came out, if you're a casual observer or if you're not really dialed in to tariffs, you can also look at it and say, I'm sure there's conversations that have occurred where, well, I thought the tariffs were ruled illegal. It becomes an education endeavor, and then it becomes a negotiation discussion as opposed to just a negotiation discussion. It's the headline impact. It just slows things down.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Nigel, just one more point, just because you asked also, I did not comment on 232. 232 does not impact us.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

There was no change.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Sorry. Any discussion about changing it does not impact us. 232 is across the board. Yep.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

That's helpful. No change to 232. That's kind of what I was asking about, really.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Correct.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Just the price-cost, it seems, obviously, the pricing conversation, we've had that already, but obviously the inventory, the unit cost of inventory, the inflation-embedded inventory coming through the P&L is certainly a factor as well. I'm just wondering, are we now at a point where the headwind from the inventory conversion is now behind us?

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

We're getting close. That's a bit what I was referring to when I was talking about the plateau of the costs. Yeah, we've got a little bit left in there, but around mid-year, we'll have pushed all that through, essentially.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Okay. Thank you very much, guys.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

You're welcome.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Tommy Moll with Stephens. Please proceed with your questions.

Tommy Moll
Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Morning, Tommy.

Tommy Moll
Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens

Contract signings have gone pretty well. Pricing discussions are behind plan. My question is whether these two are linked. Is it the case that as you're bringing on new contract business, the pricing discussions don't proceed as fast as they might otherwise?

Jeff Watts
Jeff Watts
President and Chief Sales Officer at Fastenal

No, I don't think so. I think it's more the current contract customers. When we go to raise pricing, a lot of the contracts we have today have set terms in place, so we can't change pricing for 30 days or 60 days. When the Supreme Court came out with their ruling, a lot of those conversations almost got put on hold from our customers, really pushed back hard. I don't think a lot of the newer business, that's really not the case. I mean, we're pricing in a lot of that already when we get the business. It's more the current contracts we have in place.

Tommy Moll
Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you, Jeff. Follow-up question on capital allocation. I wanted to ask about the repurchases. The dollar amount was pretty modest this quarter, but it has been some time since you've deployed capital there, and I would like any kind of update you can provide on a philosophy that may be emerging here or what was behind the decision-making process to deploy those dollars. Thank you.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

Yeah. First of all, I do second your point. It's small, but we just felt as a management team that we wanted to start to offset dilution. That is what we've done and we'll see. That would be our approach go forward for a bit here. We can change our mind overnight, but that's what you're seeing is just a simple mathematical offset of dilution. As we always say, we'll remain opportunistic, meaning when the time comes, we'll do something else.

Tommy Moll
Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens

Sure. Thank you for the insight. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Chris Snyder with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your questions.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. Fastener, particularly, I guess, on the fastener side, the company turns the inventory very slowly. That has always provided a lot of visibility into the future COGS, and it felt like you guys were always able to use that visibility or lag to very appropriately balance price cost through prior inflation upcycles, whether it was 2022, 2023, or even last year. It seems like that is more difficult now to kind of match that price cost for the company. I guess is there a reason why? You were talking earlier, I think, to Nigel about maybe a little bit more education that's needed this time around just because tariffs keep moving. Is that why it's more difficult to kind of execute and realize the price, because it's obviously been kind of falling short of expectations for almost one year now? Thank you.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

First off, we recently changed some of our reporting. In that, we talk more about our direct material side of the business and our indirect material side of the business, and really challenged our analytics team to follow suit and do that on how we think about gross margin and parcel out maybe the fastener business a little differently, parcel out some of the product lines little differently. What I can tell you is the struggles we have right now are not in fasteners. Our margin is doing just fine there. Where some of the struggles are is you start looking at some of the areas of the business that maybe have a little bit more of a branded presence, because fasteners don't really have a branded presence. There's some, don't get me wrong, but that's not where the dollars are.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Our safety margin is challenged because some of the branded presence. Our cutting tool margin is challenged because some of the branded presence. The things that you've known from us historically is true. Our fastener business, we have great insight because we have time on our side, and we can have those types of conversations with the customer, and we can really talk about this OEM fastener. We have four months of inventory, and here's what the price is going to do at the end of that four months.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

You can really have a different discussion because our customers know we're about managing price cost. We're not about inventory profits in the short term, because that's the relationship we have with our customer. Where we're getting squeezed is on some of those branded products where our timeline to understanding the cost change and how fast it occurs in our FIFO inventory is much different than what it is in our fastener inventory. That's where we're getting squeezed.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. That's really helpful. Appreciate all that color. If I could just ask one on Q2. It sounds like price costs will start getting better, maybe into the back half of the year, if I'm kind of understanding the commentary right. Does Q2 get worse before it gets better? I would imagine some of the headwinds that came through on the fuel side will be bigger in Q2, just because in Q1, maybe only a month or so was impacted. Is there a little bit more pressure that's coming before we kind of get into the recovery? Do you think Q1 is really kind of the trough of that price cost? Thank you.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

I'm going to answer this one only because I want Jeff and Max to take a step back. As you know, we're in a leadership transition here, and Max is relatively new in his role. I'm going to answer this based on 30 years of experience. Q2 is challenging. Q1 was challenging. Our message to our teams is here's what's happening, here's what we need to do. I believe this team will react. Q2 will be challenging, and I personally feel good when I look out to Q3 and Q4 because I know how long it takes to do certain things. There's price discussions we've had going on since December that there are price changes that we've made and some went into effect 1st of March, some are 1st of April. There's some in 1st of May, 1st of June.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Again, as Jeff touched on, at times it's about the contractual obligations. Sometimes it's just about negotiating and finally agreeing on a price. It might be from the customer's perspective, where they have some ability on pricing and what they can do on their end from the standpoint of their marketplace. Q1, in January, that's the only place in my gut I didn't feel good, was Q1. Once we have some certainty on the Supreme Court ruling, at least it allows you to understand a piece. We still don't understand some other aspects and what other type of challenges there will be to tariffs coming down the road. Q2 is challenging, and I believe the Fastenal team can pull it off.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you, Dan. I really appreciate all that.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

That's not a mathematical answer. That's just an honest answer.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

No, I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Baumann with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your questions.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Managing Director at JPMorgan

Oh, thank you for putting me on here. I just wanted to touch on incremental margin expectations for this year now. I think last quarter, in response to a question, Dan suggested that high-20s on incremental margins would be possible this year. Has enough changed to alter your thinking there? I think you still lap the incentive comp headwinds in second quarter, which should be a nice tailwind for the business from a SG&A leverage perspective. I guess I'm just wondering if the price timing dynamics have had enough of an impact to change your thinking on incremental margin expectations for this year.

Max Tunnicliff
Max Tunnicliff
CFO at Fastenal

No, Patrick, we don't believe that is the case. There's enough efficiencies, we would say structural, down in the SG&A space. Plus, as Dan said, there are actions that we're taking to mitigate the gross margin headwind that will be in an incremental space that we had expected in the past. Just the short answer to say we confirm our previous statement.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Managing Director at JPMorgan

Okay.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Now, please.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Managing Director at JPMorgan

I just had one follow-up on the tariffs. On Section 232, it sounds like Fastenal was already charging for the full customs value based on your statements. Did you observe any non-compliance in the industry that would have any impact on market dynamics in fasteners going forward regarding the competition and how they were approaching charging for tariffs on imports?

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

No. The answer is no on that. Nothing came to our attention.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Managing Director at JPMorgan

Okay. Thanks a lot, guys. Best of luck.

Dan Florness
Dan Florness
CEO at Fastenal

Yep. Welcome, Patrick.

Dray Schreiber
Dray Schreiber
Accounting Manager at Fastenal

I see we're at four minutes to the hour. If you have any follow-up questions, I know Max is available through the balance of the day. Thank you again for joining our call today, and thanks for your support on the Blue Team. Have a good day, everybody.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Executives
    • Dan Florness
      Dan Florness
      CEO
    • Dray Schreiber
      Dray Schreiber
      Accounting Manager
    • Jeff Watts
      Jeff Watts
      President and Chief Sales Officer
    • Max Tunnicliff
      Max Tunnicliff
      CFO
Analysts
    • Chris Snyder
      Executive Director at Morgan Stanley
    • David Manthey
      Senior Research Analyst at Baird
    • Nigel Coe
      Managing Director at Wolfe Research
    • Patrick Baumann
      Managing Director at JPMorgan
    • Ryan Merkel
      Co-Group Head of Industrials at William Blair
    • Stephen Volkmann
      Managing Director and Industrials Research Analyst at Jefferies
    • Tommy Moll
      Managing Director at Stephens
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