Fastenal (FAST) reported earnings on Thur 11 July 19 (b/o)

• Fastenal (FAST) as a distributor—and as one of the first industrial companies to report numbers this earnings season—its numbers will hold a lot of clues for investors regarding the health of the industrial economy

** charts before earnings **

 

** charts after earnings **

Fastenal increases quarterly dividend to $0.22/share from $0.215/share (split adjusted)
Fastenal misses by $0.01, reports revs in-line

• Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $0.36 per share, $0.01 worse than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $0.37; revenues rose 7.9% year/year to $1.37 bln vs the $1.38 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
• "Our gross profit, as a percentage of net sales, declined 180 basis points to 46.9% in the second quarter of 2019 from 48.7% in the second quarter of 2018. The most significant factors behind the decline in our gross profit percentage in the period were the impacts of customer and product mix and net inflation on product margins, the latter of which had a larger negative impact on our margin than in the first quarter of 2019. While we successfully raised prices as one element of our strategy to offset tariffs placed to date on products sourced from China, those increases were not sufficient to also counter general inflation in the marketplace. We have taken additional actions in the third quarter of 2019 to counter the broader pressures we are experiencing on our costs as well as the additional tariffs that were levied on China-sourced products in May 2019."