HD Supply Inc. continued its plan to build up e-commerce and other sales functions in the third quarter with a $3 million investment “in our selling channels such as our sales force, our e-commerce site and our mobile applications,” CEO Joe DeAngelo said on the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday.

“Investment in our enabling functions, including debt analytics, supply chain and category management capabilities, further support our customer commitments to be easy, accurate, helpful,” DeAngelo told analysts, according to a transcript of the call from Seeking Alpha. “This $10 million to $20 million of accelerated investment will continue in the fourth quarter of 2017 and through fiscal 2018,” he said.

The distributor of industrial and maintenance products reported a 7.5% increase in total sales for the third quarter, to $1.37 billion.

HD Supply doesn’t break out e-commerce revenue, but says it processes much of its sales through its two main e-commerce sites: HDSupplySolutions.com for facilities maintenance, repair and operations, or MRO, products; and WhiteCap.com for industrial and construction products and materials. It also operates HDSupplyHIS.com, which sells home improvement products to contractors and do-it-yourself consumers, but says this is a relatively small part of its business.

For the third quarter ended Oct. 29, HD Supply, No. 42 in the B2B E-Commerce 300, reported:

• Net sales of $1.370 billion, up 7.5% from $1.275 billion a year earlier.
• Gross profit of $542 million, up 5.9% from $512 million, resulting in a profit margin of 39.6% compared with 40.2% in the same period last year.
• Net income of $452 million, up more than seven-fold from $60 million. The increase in net income was primarily due to gains related to the sale of the company’s Waterworks piping systems products business.

For the nine months ended Oct. 29, HD Supply reported:

• Net sales of $3.938 billion, up 5.5% from $3.734 billion a year earlier.
• Gross profit of $1.565 billion, up 4.8% from $1.494 billion, resulting in a profit margin of 39.7%, down slightly from 40.0%.
• Net income of $979 million, up from $144 million.

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