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| But generally speaking, it's been gaining because we've been really successful in Onsite and government locations that we have in the business |
| And good is that we can provide a high level of service and it's economically good business for, again, both parties |
| Earlier when I was talking about the transition with Terry, one of the things that always makes me feel good about transition within Fastenal is the incredible bench of talent we have that exists throughout the organization |
| Manufacturing grew 6.4% despite soft demand, benefiting from further growth in the Onsite installed base and initiatives in national accounts in the field to target key account plan spend, which is disproportionately manufacturing-oriented |
| And so, pleased that the team was able to match the operating margin of 21% from last year |
| Growth driver performance is not quite where we would like it to be, but it's at levels that continue to support good growth in our installed base, success in providing differentiated value to our customers and further cost and asset efficiency |
| We are certainly encouraged by the improvement in our September daily sales rate to up 5% |
| The Blue Team, if I think about the last several years, we had a unique opportunity to serve the marketplace because of our pristine balance sheet |
| Freight remained favorable, reflecting modest leverage of our captive fleet expenses, reduced use of external freight providers, lower fuel and reduced shipping costs |
| We also benefited from the absence of last year's $3.4 million glove write-down and slightly positive price-cost |
| But I feel good about our ability over time to continue to manage that and lever it, as I said with our FMI, that business is growing quite handsomely, and we grew our expense to 6%, so we levered that nicely |
| We typically believe that given mid-single digit daily sales growth, we should be able to defend our margin |
| We continue to believe we are positioned to meaningfully accelerate sales growth when underlying demand improves while sustaining strong profitability and returns |
| So, we're seeing good growth there |
| The resulting strong cash flow means our balance sheet remains conservatively capitalized at the end of the third quarter of 2023 with debt ending at 7% of total capital versus 9.4% in the second quarter of 2023 and 14.9% in the third quarter of 2022 |
| Operating margin performance remained stable despite the slow growth and our capacity to generate cash to reinvest in the business remains strong |
| So on the gross margin side, we've gotten better at our ability to price |
| They both have done an incredible job over the last five, six years of challenging their leaders to be better at managing the expense side |
| In contrast, non-fastener products remain healthy, due to further growth in our vending installed base and improved comparisons |
| But I'm really proud of what the team is doing, and you see that shine through |
| The team's performing really well here |
| That's our highest performance in a decade that's averaged just shy of 100% -- about 95% |
| And in one of the components of that is our business and our government business has been gaining strength as we've gone through the year, but it didn't gain strength sequentially in September |
| When you look at our sales by product line in -- in our monthly and quarterly releases, one thing you do see is, our safety business, grew almost 10% in the month of September and a lot of that could be attributed to the success we're seeing in FMI |
| That's about an organization that's gotten better over time |
| And they've just done a wonderful job on that |
| When COVID hit the globe back in 2020, we were able to step forward and secure and -- and purchase and fund with cash a meaningful increase in inventory, primarily centered on safety supplies, because our customers and society, in general, needed something to get through that period, and we were proud to be part of the solution |
| I like it from the standpoint, I think it's a better message for our team, go and grow the dam business and don't -- and stop spending time about what you're not going to do |
| Our sales growth in the quarter translated into EPS growth -- EPS of $0.52, 4.1% growth over the same period last year |
| And our field and hub operations have sustainably streamlined inventory processes |
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| Macro data points and feedback from the regional leadership continue to point to sluggish demand and a cautious outlook for spending and production |
| We continue to experience stagnant demand, a cyclical shift favoring non-fasteners and a secular shift favoring larger manufacturing-oriented customers |
| But it's given us some challenges on the fact that occupancy has grown |
| Conditions remained challenging in the third quarter of '23, reflected in a daily sales growth rate of 4% |
| But even though we closed some branches and closed some locations, our rent has not gotten cheaper in the last 12 months, and we will continue to be challenged with that |
| From a product standpoint, fasteners are relatively weak at down 2% due to their more cyclical profile and rapid pricing moderation |
| One is, when we came through the tariff period, that was brutal from the standpoint of our pricing tools being so decentralized, communicating what was changing almost on a week-by-week basis was incredibly difficult |
| The second thing I talked about a moment ago was simply freight revenues has softened a little bit in the face of a weaker cycle |
| But those are the moving pieces that I see playing out to a slightly weaker fourth quarter gross margin relative to third |
| At the end of any given year, particularly years where demand is poor |
| And so in the past, we've talked about OEM, and I think people have been surprised that OEM hasn't gotten negative given sort of the behavior |
| And we beefed up our balance sheet and our cash flow suffered as a result, but I believe our standing with our customers and in the marketplace never performed better, because the market could rely on the covenant that Fastenal provided to them in being a great supply chain partner |
| And that was a bit of a challenge at the end of the third quarter that if that carries into the fourth quarter because demand is still weak, I think that, that goes from something that was doing fantastically for us in Q2 and becomes perhaps a little bit weaker |
| And then, you also have an easy comp, I think you had called out like weaker product margins last year |
| Again, if you remember, in Q3, we talked about fasteners, we had a little bit of a deficit in price-cost |
| And we really challenged our district leaders to think about that as occupancy on our internal P&L |
| Now, COVID threw some challenges our way |
| But there was also elements of folks had such an unstable supply chain for everything else |
| The themes were a society really frustrated, not with us, just with some -- just frustrated |
| So I think relative to the third quarter level, I think you're likely to see the fourth quarter come down a little bit greater than normal seasonality in this case |
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