Global Industrial Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 4, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter revenue rose 7.7%, or 9.3% on an average-daily-sales basis, marking the third consecutive quarter of high-single-digit growth; management said similar momentum has continued into the third quarter.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company’s relationship-led B2B strategy is gaining traction, with GPO sales on pace to reach $100 million annually, more than 1,300 digital customer connections, and digital transactions exceeding 60% of total volume.
  • Positive Sentiment: Canada remained a standout, with revenue up more than 30% in local currency for the fourth consecutive quarter. Management also cited strong growth among strategic accounts and opportunities to expand share of wallet.
  • Negative Sentiment: Adjusted gross margin was 34.7%, pressured by higher transportation and fuel-surcharge costs and a greater mix of larger, lower-margin orders. Management expects margins to remain broadly around recent levels while noting continued exposure to trade-policy and fuel volatility.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company ended the quarter with $86.7 million in cash, no debt, and more than $119 million of credit availability; it continued share repurchases and its dividend, while also building a pipeline of potential M&A opportunities.
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Earnings Conference Call
Global Industrial Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Global Industrial's second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Smargiassi of The Plunkett Group. Please go ahead.

Mike Smargiassi
Founding Partner at The Plunkett Group

Thank you. Welcome to the Global Industrial second quarter 2026 earnings call. Today's call will include formal remarks from Anesa Chaibi, Chief Executive Officer, and Tex Clark, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Formal remarks will be followed by a question and answer session. Today's discussion may include certain forward-looking statements that should be understood that actual results could differ materially from those projected due to a number of factors, including those described under the forward-looking statements caption and other risk factors in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. In addition, on today's call, management will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP measures, together with reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, are included in today's earnings release.

Mike Smargiassi
Founding Partner at The Plunkett Group

These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, results prepared in accordance with GAAP. The earnings release is available on the company's website and has been filed with the SEC on a Form 8-K. This call is the property of Global Industrial Company. I will now turn the call over to Anesa.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I would like to start by thanking the entire Global Industrial team for all of their hard work and dedication. Due to their efforts, we delivered another quarter of strong, broad-based growth, with second quarter revenue increasing 7.7% or 9.3% on an average daily basis. This marks our third consecutive quarter of high single-digit average daily sales growth. As of today, this revenue momentum has continued at a similar growth rate into the third quarter. Over the past year, we have been repositioning Global Industrial toward a deeper relationship-led B2B model. Our objective is to strengthen our value proposition and become a preferred supplier to our customers by becoming an extension of their team and making it easier for them to transact with us through the channels and systems they use every day.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

As we expand our e-procurement capabilities and GPO relationships, we are integrating into our customers' purchasing processes, leading to improved retention, increased share of wallet, and stronger financial performance. Our GPO business has now reached meaningful scale, with annualized sales on pace to hit $100 million this year, an important milestone for an organic initiative that began just a few years ago. GPO relationships provide us access to new customers through established contractual arrangements and allow us to engage with a more sophisticated procurement-level buyer. Their industry specialization for public sector, healthcare, hospitality, and private sector manufacturing provides strong alignment with our customer vertical approach. They also create a natural pathway into customers' e-procurement systems, where purchasing activity can become more recurring and integrated. As a key 2026 priority, e-procurement is another area we are seeing significant momentum.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

By integrating our offering directly into customers' procurement platforms, we are moving closer to where purchasing decisions are made. Our punch-out integrations are designed to include more customer-centric experiences, allowing buying experiences to be customized to align with what our customers are searching for. This improves ease of use, strengthens customer retention, and provides opportunities to broaden the range of products and solutions customers purchase from us. In the first half of this year, we expanded our e-procurement customer base and have implemented more than 50 purchasing connections, bringing our total digital connections to greater than 1,300 customers, and it's still growing.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

At the same time, our overall digital business represents more than 60% of our transaction volume. We continue to enhance our digital experience and the integrated e-procurement capabilities that embed us in customer purchasing workflows, while at the same time facilitating their experience to make them more productive.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

These capabilities are increasingly important because many B2B customers have a multi-channel purchase approach. They may interact with a sales representative, engage a product specialist, and ultimately place an order through an integrated digital platform. We have been building upon our capabilities to support that full customer experience. Our sales organization now consists of inside and field-based resources with national account support, vertical expertise, and digital capabilities. This allows us to deploy the right resources for the right opportunities to provide the most comprehensive support for our largest and highest potential customers. We are also becoming more specialized in how we approach the market. Our sales, marketing, and merchandising teams are increasingly aligned around customer verticals. This is more than an organizational realignment. It is a shift towards a 360-degree understanding of our customers' operating environment and helping them solve a broader set of problems.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

By developing greater vertical expertise, our teams can have more relevant conversations, identify additional applications for our products, and we can deliver more complete solutions. We are seeing that approach translate into larger orders, stronger performance from our most strategic customers, and purchases across multiple core product categories. We are also advancing the use of data, automation, and artificial intelligence across the organization. Our initial focus has been on practical applications that enhance sales productivity, customer engagement, marketing insights, and the speed and quality of decision-making. We remain disciplined in how we deploy these technologies, prioritizing solutions that improve the customer experience while empowering our associates to leverage these technologies to be more effective and deliver measurable returns.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

We have been pleased with our progress. We are still early in the evolution of our go-to-market model, and there is considerable runway and work ahead of us in 2026 and beyond. We intend to continue scaling our sales capabilities, expanding our relationships with customers, increasing e-procurement adoption, strengthening our vertical expertise, and improving the coordination of our sales, marketing, merchandising, and digital teams. We believe these initiatives can support sustainable organic growth and continued market share gains over time. Finally, I would like to recognize one specific team within Global Industrial. Our Canadian team delivered another exceptional quarter. Revenue increased more than 30% in local currency, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. After surpassing CAD 100 million in annual revenue and local currency last year, our Canadian business continues to demonstrate its expanding scale and its significant long-term potential. We are just getting started.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

I will now turn the call over to Tex to cover our financials in more detail.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Thank you, Anesa. Second quarter revenue was $386.6 million, with average daily sales growing 9.3%. For the first half of 2026, our average daily sales improved 8.4%. In the quarter, U.S. revenue was up 6.3%, and Canada revenue improved 33.7% in local currency. We generated broad-based growth in our sales channels and customer verticals. Accounts managed by sales representative increased in the low double digits, led by our largest strategic accounts. Growth was led by our retail wholesale vertical, while our core industrial customers approached double-digit gains. Results benefited from both volume and price. Pricing contributed approximately four points of growth, with a balance due to volume and mix. This was the third consecutive quarter of volume improvement. Average order value increased approximately 10%, driven primarily by greater mix of larger orders rather than price.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

This is an important point as it highlights the strategic customer relationships we are building and our increasing participation in projects and GPOs. On the tariff front, during the quarter, we recorded approximately $26 million associated with refunds of IEEPA tariffs. We recognized the benefit of approximately $21 million in cost of sales, a reduction of $4 million in inventory related to tariffs paid on items not yet sold, and $1 million of interest income. At present, we believe any future refunds associated with IEEPA refunds will be immaterial.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

This benefit is reflected in our GAAP results. Because it is not representative of the company's underlying operating performance, we've excluded this one-time benefit from non-GAAP adjusted gross profit, adjusted operating income, and adjusted earnings per share in our non-GAAP presentation. Non-GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $134.3 million. Non-GAAP gross margin was 34.7%, more in line with historical performance.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

As a reminder, gross margin during the second quarter of 2025 was a record 37.1%, which included approximately 150 basis points of FIFO-related timing benefits associated with price increases taken upon the imposition of increased tariffs in April 2025. Margin performance in the quarter reflected inflation within our transportation network associated with increasing fuel surcharges, as well as product and channel mix, which included a lower contribution from our seasonal cooling category compared with the prior year. Fuel costs remain volatile, and transportation expense continues to be elevated. We remain focused on the management of our margin profile, recognizing that mix and fluctuations in transportation costs and other inflationary pressures can create variability from quarter to quarter. Our pricing, sales, and merchandising team members remain focused on mitigating the effects of these macroeconomic impacts on our customers.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Selling general and administrative spending for the quarter was $106.1 million, an improvement of 30 basis points as a percentage of sales as compared to the second quarter last year. Variable compensation, specifically sales commissions, were up and reflect a strong sales performance in the quarter. Excluding variable performance-based compensation, SG&A generated approximately 70 basis points of leverage. Non-GAAP operating income from continuing operations was $28.2 million, and non-GAAP operating margin was 7.3%. Operating cash flow from continuing operations was $41.3 million in the quarter. Total depreciation and amortization expense in the quarter was $2 million, while CapEx were $0.9 million. We continue to expect 2026 capital expenditures in the range of $3 million-$4 million, which primarily reflect maintenance-related investments and equipment within our distribution network. We currently expect a tax rate between 26% and 26.5% for the remainder of 2026. I will now turn to our balance sheet.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

We continue to have a strong and liquid balance sheet. As of June 30th, we had $86.7 million in cash, no debt, and over $119 million of excess availability under our credit facility. The quarter cash balance reflects approximately $15.3 million of tariff refunds received in the fiscal second quarter, while $10.9 million was received in early July and was recorded as a receivable at quarter end. In the second quarter, we repurchased approximately 160,000 shares of stock for a total price of $4.7 million. As for our dividend, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.28 per share of common stock. I will now turn it back over to Anesa for closing remarks.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Thanks, Tex. Overall, we are pleased with the first half of the year. We have been able to sustain our sales momentum and deliver profitable growth. Our strategic initiatives that we implemented are beginning to deliver volume growth and notable results. We remain focused on the external macroeconomic environment, including geopolitical conditions, transportation costs, and other sources of volatility. We will continue to proactively manage those factors while remaining focused on the areas within our control. Our priorities are clear. We are deepening customer relationships, capturing greater share of wallet, strengthening our vertical expertise, and deploying our resources against the opportunities with the greatest long-term potential. Now that we are in the third quarter, we also look forward to our upcoming national trade show in Dallas, Texas, at the end of September.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

The event will bring together many of our largest customers and more than 175 supplier partners, creating a valuable forum to showcase our broad product offering, strengthen key relationships, and generate new sales opportunities across the business. At this point, I would like to thank all of our associates again for their hard work, adaptability, and commitment to serving our customers. I also would like to thank our customers, suppliers, and shareholders for their continued support. We look forward to building on our progress through the balance of 2026. Now I'll ask the operator to open the call up for questions. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Michael Francis with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Michael Francis
Michael Francis
Analyst at William Blair

Hi, Anesa, Tex. Great quarter. Wanted to start off on gross margin. The margin ex tariff increases would have missed what we had been down a little bit quarter-over-quarter. I know you talked about the higher transport costs, but would love to know sort of what the puts and takes are within that sort of bucket.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Hey, Michael, how you doing? I'll take that. I'll start with that one. When we think about that, one of the things we saw, so again, like you're right, we'll exclude the tariff refund portion and get back to that non-GAAP 34.7%. Again, down from that previous high. I think what we're seeing is the number one impact of that period was that continued inflation within our transportation network, both LTL and UPS, our parcel related charges, saw those increased fuel surcharges that we had. While some of that was passed through to customers, other portions of that was absorbed by the company, which impacted that gross margin. I think one other thing that we saw in the period was really our mix of orders.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

When we look at the different gross margin rates in different bands and the sourcing channels, the sales channels, we actually saw a fair amount of consistency. When we looked at the total mix, we saw some decreased gross margin rate. One area specifically was larger orders where we took on more large orders. I mean, while that brought in a little bit of headwind on the gross margin line, we look at each one of those and they're profitable orders, profitable projects that are accretive to the overall business. Again, did impact that gross margin line a bit in the quarter. Those are areas that we do expect will be continuing into the Q3 period. Again, we'll continue to mitigate that for our customers wherever we can.

Michael Francis
Michael Francis
Analyst at William Blair

Broadly, Anesa, you touched on a bunch of different initiatives to start. Between all of those, I'd love to know what the most important initiatives are sort of driving results today, and then what the most important you think will be going forward.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Thank you for the question. I mean, I touched upon a variety of things, our specialization expansion and services strategy is working. Most important, I think it's a combo of all of the things that I mentioned, in particular, we changed the go-to-market strategy and the approach in the way that we go to market, along with building out an outside sales team and just having more interaction and getting more entrenched with our customers, Michael. I think all of those are starting to convert. In addition, we've also looked at product assortment that I've mentioned on some prior calls, right? In that case, not only are we focused on our brands, but also expanding and the national brands that we're providing into the marketplace. Tex highlighted some of the mix shifts.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

We're kind of settling into a little bit of a different profile as we move forward. I think all of that is converting quite nicely for us, and we're seeing the growth. It's sustaining, that gives us confidence to think about where we reinvest into the business to continue to scale and grow. We're just watching everything very closely. I think for us, it'll just be prudent to make sure we've got our eye on everything that is happening around us, just continuing to stay the course on the strategy and that execution, and getting the organization aligned and prepared to just move faster and start to move into the marketplace in that manner. That's the goal at this point, and so far so good. I'm pleased with the progress, but it's early innings, and I think we still have more to do.

Michael Francis
Michael Francis
Analyst at William Blair

Okay. Last one from me. You've got more cash now than you've ever had. I'd love to know what's driving that beyond just the tariff refund, and also if there's any sort of plans we should think about behind this, whether that be M&A buybacks or some sort of special dividend.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

I'll jump in there. You're right. When we look at that quarter in cash balance at about $86 million. Again, as we clarified that actually there was $10 million of that tariff refund, which hit in Q3, that was on the balance sheet as receivable. Very good cash position. I think when we look at our overall profile, we've been getting good conversion of cash, and that's just a reflection of the overall sales channel that we're seeing good sales. That's translating into good collections of our customers' receivables in that profile. Otherwise, I think we're continuing to focus on our capital allocation strategy, which includes investing in our business where appropriate.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Again, you saw that we did continue to buy back some shares in the period, of approximately 160,000 shares in the earlier part of the third quarter, at an average price just under $30. Again, continuing our dividend will be a continued use of our expected cash flow. You're right, we do have a healthy balance sheet at this point.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Yeah. The only thing I'll add is that I'm also looking at M&A opportunities, and that's something that we're building out a pipeline and leaning into more so to help us execute and expand and speed up our go-to-market, if you will, Michael.

Michael Francis
Michael Francis
Analyst at William Blair

Okay. I appreciate, yeah. I appreciate the questions. I'll pass it on.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

All right.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Thank you, Michael.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. It's really nice to see the solid second quarter results. Just wondering, as you progressed through the quarter, did you see much variability from April through June in terms of your average daily sales, or was it more or less kind of consistent throughout the quarter?

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Yeah, Anthony, I'll jump in right there. I think you hit the nail on the head with referencing average daily sales. We've had to actually have a shift in the calendar with July 4th falling into our second quarter this year versus third quarter. When we look at an average daily sales basis, our growth rate was pretty consistent throughout April, May and June, which gives us guidance that we saw pretty consistent through the first part of the year as well. Very stable, good growth profile, consistently to get to where we are. I think as Anesa highlighted on our call just a few moments ago, that that growth rate has continued into the third quarter.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

That's great to hear. As we think about your, I guess, core SMB customers, I know you talked about some of the strategic accounts and it was good to hear some data points on the GPO customers. I guess if you could just comment on what you saw from your traditional kind of SMB customers, whether we've seen similar performance as recent quarters or not. How do we think about that?

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Yeah, I can jump in as well, Anthony, on that. I think one area when we looked and when we talked about broad-based growth, we actually saw good growth in our various customer verticals. We did see especially solid growth on those larger customers. One thing that we saw good e-sales across the business, e-commerce was up. Our new account generation was up. We did see good solid growth across, but just where we were really leaning in was into some of those larger customers that had the most opportunity, and we performed well with them. It truly was broad-based growth across our portfolio of customers this quarter.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Got you.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Yeah. The only thing I would add, Anthony, is that the small and medium businesses are an important target customer for us, we're very much lining up to ensure that we're supporting them and meeting their needs as well. I just think we're just going through quite a bit of change, if you will, as we go to market, and just settling in and better understanding those customers and having that customer centricity to understand how do we best line up to be able to serve their needs and help them solve their day-to-day problems.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Got you. Okay. Thanks, Anesa. Yeah, one of the things that I know, Anesa, you've been working on is creating more of that customer-centric culture. I guess, where are you with this journey now, and how should we think about the impact on the company as you look to—

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Change that's occurring as a company. I would say it's positive change. Nevertheless, it is change. People within the company, I gave them kudos and thanked them for all their hard work and effort. It's because they're going through this, and making sure that we better understand our customers better. By understanding our customers better, it has implications on the way that we need to line ourselves up as a company. I think we're in the early stages of that. I hope that we could settle into a rhythm and a cadence coming out of 2026, going into 2027, building out and scaling the business to be able to meet the need and to capture more of the market share. I think, again we're halfway into this year.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

We have the benefit of what is within our control, but we're also managing the uncontrollables as best we can, right? I can't predict those. Right now, the strategy is working. The organization is lining up to do that. The customer centricity is permeating the organization. It doesn't just happen overnight.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Of course. Right. Lastly for me, as far as the gross margins, obviously excluding the tariff refunds, it was 34.7%. I know there's some changes with the seasonality and product mix and customer mix. Just broadly speaking, how do we think about the gross margins for the balance of the year?

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

I think this is an area that I'll jump right in as well. I think this is an area that we've seen the last two quarters very consistent gross margins at 34.7% and 34.8% on an adjusted basis. I think as we look at that mix and then the current order mix, customer mix, sales mix right now, I think it's probably something that we can project to be in line with where we're at going forward. Last year, we were getting the benefit in Q2 and Q3, really, of those pricing actions, before the tariffs fully came into impact. We saw that margin rate decline a little bit into that fourth quarter last year.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Again, right now, we don't expect as many of those pricing actions, but again, it's something that we'll have to continue to monitor and observe what's happening out there with changes to trade policy, with changes to fuel. Those are all things that we're going to have to take into consideration. Again, sales, marketing, merchandising, really working together to make sure they're putting that right pricing value proposition out there for each of our customer sets.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Understood. Well, thank you very much and best of luck.

Anesa Chaibi
Anesa Chaibi
CEO at Global Industrial

Great.

Tex Clark
Tex Clark
Senior VP and CFO at Global Industrial

Thank you, Anthony.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Anesa Chaibi
      Anesa Chaibi
      CEO
    • Tex Clark
      Tex Clark
      Senior VP and CFO
Analysts
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