Fastenal — No. 10 on Industrial Distribution's Big 50 List — reported its February sales results on Monday, led by its strongest year-over-year daily sales gain in 14 months.
The company posted February sales of $324.8 million, up 1.1 percent overall from a year earlier, and up 6.1 percent on a daily sales basis as February 2017 had one fewer selling day than in 2016. It was the largest daily sales gain for Fastenal since January 2015's 12.0 percent. Daily sales hadn't grown by more than 3.9 percent until this past month.
According to the company's fiscal sales reports, February's daily sales of $16.24 million was the highest monthly total in company history.
February marked eight straight months of year-over-year daily sales growth for Fastenal, continuing a healthy start to 2017. Here's how the past 13 months of the company's daily sales growth have looked like:
  February 2017: +6.1 percent
  January 2017: +3.8 percent
  December 2016: +3.2 percent
  November 2016: +1.2 percent
  October 2016: +3.9 percent
  September 2016: +2.8 percent
  August 2016: +0.3 percent
  July 2016: +2.1 percent
  June 2016: 0.0 percent
  May 2016: +1.1 percent
  April 2016: +3.8 percent
  March 2016: 0.0 percent
  February 2016: +2.6 percent
The company's February sales to manufacturing customers grew by 6.3 percent, while sales to non-residential construction customers grew by 6.2 percent — a reversal from six straight quarters of non-res constructiond decline, as well as January. In January, sales to manufacturing customers grew 4.7 percent, while non-res construction sales declined 0.1 percent.
Fastenal's February daily sales of fasteners grew by 1.5 percent year-over-year, a reversal from six straight quarters of decline, along with January. Meanwhile, all other sales grew by 9.1 percent. In January, fastener sales declined by 1.9 percent, while all other sales grew by 7.1 percent.
Fastenal opened two stores in February and didn't close any, the same as January. Its total store count of 2,507 is down 4.8 percent year-over-year. In 2016, the company closed or consolidated 144 stores and opened 40.
The company ended February with a total headcount of 19,782, essentially flat compared to January. There were no notable monthly changes to employment figures.

Source: http://www.inddist.com