Despite slack sales in the United States, where total net sales for the third quarter dipped less than 1% year over year to remain at about $2.04 billion, U.S. e-commerce sales increased 17% in Q3 for W.W. Grainger Inc.
That put the distributor of business and industrial supplies at about $836.2 million in U.S. e-commerce sales for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, up from about $715.8 million a year earlier. Through the nine months of this year, Grainger has racked up about $2.4 billion in e-commerce sales.
Although Grainger doesn’t break out specific e-commerce sales, it says that e-commerce accounted for about 41% of its total Q3 U.S. sales and about 40% of sales for the first half.
The company’s online sales also had a bit of a downside in Q3, as a 1% increase in sales transactions through its off-price tools e-commerce site, Zoro.com, resulted in a steeper drop in gross profit margins, the company said in its Q3 earnings call last week, according to a transcript provided by Seeking Alpha. It noted that Grainger’s gross profit margin fell 1.2% in the quarter from a year earlier, a drop that would have been 0.9% without factoring in Zoro’s sales.
Grainger also reported for the third quarter ended Sept. 30:
- Total U.S. sales dipped about 0.2% to $2.039 billion from $2.045 billion a year earlier;
- Total global sales dipped about 0.1% to $2.53 billion from $2.56 billion;
- Net earnings declined 16.6% to $192.2 million from $230.3 million.
For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Grainger reported:
- U.S. e-commerce sales of about $2.44 billion, up 17.3% from about $2.08 billion a year earlier;
- Total U.S. sales increased 1.7% to $6.04 billion from $5.94 billion;
- Total global sales inched up 0.6% to $7.49 billion from $7.45 billion;
- Net earnings fell 4.1% to $636.00 million from $661.18 million.
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