W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next question comes from Tommy Moll with Stephens.

Tommy Moll : D.G., you used the phrase reasonably steady to characterize the demand environment. So my question is, if you could unpack that a little bit or offer any helpful anecdotes, the revenue guidance or the range was — midpoint rather moves slightly lower. I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but is there anything behind that worth calling out? Or is it FX noise or something else?

D.G. Macpherson: Well, I think the reality is the volume this year, the volume in the market has been near 0, pretty much all year. And so all of our volume share gain — all volume pluses have been share gain, that will continue. I think the biggest difference is moving through the fourth quarter. We had price that happened last year that has been an increase in our revenue line for the first three quarters, but we lapped that going into the fourth quarter. So we don’t really see any changes. There’s nothing to be made up, but this is exactly how we predicted the year to play out and it’s playing out pretty much exactly as we expected. So we are not at all concerned about the revenue line. It’s exactly what we expected.

Tommy Moll : Great. And then shifting back to gross margins and specifically around the High-Touch segment. I know 40% is still the official long-term anchor there, and it may be prudent to wait to revise that. But could you even walk us maybe qualitatively from the 41.7% that you just reported in 3Q to how that may progress for 4Q and even into early next year?

Dee Merriwether: Sure. So you’re right, it feels a little early for us to start resetting things. At this point, which I’ve kind of reiterated the last couple of quarters. But what I would say related to High-Touch and if you compare really Q3 to where we think we’re going to go sequentially Q4, I will call out, like in my prepared remarks that we’ve mentioned our service-related or product mix. That happened as a benefit both in Q2 and in Q3. We don’t expect that to continue into Q4. In addition to that, there are some other pieces like that fall into the price cost related to rebates last year. Both years we’re doing very good in volume as D.G. noted, but again, volume was really strong last year, still very strong, and then that reset some of your rebates. And so that will kind of fall off a little bit and then price/cost will continue to unwind, Q3 to Q4.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jacob Levinson with Melius Research.

Jacob Levinson : Just touching on the margins. I know you talked about some favorable items you have this year, and you’re certainly trending well above those 2025 targets that you laid out, but D.G. or Dee, for that manner, maybe you can just give us a sense of how you’re thinking about operating leverage in the business going forward because it — I would think at least that the growth is there that you’re probably not going to see margins contracting meaningfully, even if mix was a little bit worse or price/cost is a little bit worse?

D.G. Macpherson: Yes. I mean — so what I would say is that the adjustments that — once you take out the adjustments that you talked about, we believe that the High-Touch model will be relatively stable moving forward. And we are trending favorable to kind of targets as we talked about. The earnings model is share gain and stable gross margins and grow SG&A slower than sales, that formula is not going to change, and we expect to be able to continue to do that moving forward.