Fastenal reported its October sales results on Nov. 4, showing that continued strong demand from manufacturing customers carried the industrial supplies distributor to another solid month of daily sales growth.

The Winona, Minnesota-based company posted October sales of $603.7 million, up 13.6% year-over-year, with daily sales up by that same amount. It followed 13.7% daily sales growth in September. The October mark outpaced the 11.1% forecast by Baird Equity Research’s Industrial Distribution unit.

Though still strong, that growth rate was the smallest for the distributor since November 2021’s 13.2%.

Fastenal was No. 7 in MDM’s 2022 Top Industrial Distributors List, No. 5 in MRO and No. 2 in Fasteners.

The company reported that October daily sales to manufacturing customers increased 19.0% year-over-year (21.5% in September), dwarfing the 1.2% growth seen from non-residential construction customers (1.4% in September).

By product line, October daily sales of fasteners increased 12.2% year-over-year (15.1% in September); safety sales increased 14.7% (12.0% in September); and all other product lines grew a combined 14.1% (12.9% in September).

By geography, Fastenal’s October daily sales grew 14.1% in the U.S. (13.7% in September); grew 15.2% in Canada/Mexico (19.8% in September); and declined 5.7% in the rest of International (-4.5% in September).

Other notes from Fastenal’s October

• The company’s national sales accounts saw 19.0% daily sales growth, identical to September, while non-national sales accounts grew 7.0%, also a repeat from September.
• 82.0% of Fastenal’s Top 11 national accounts posted growth, compared to 76.0% in September
• 66.8% of the company’s public branches saw growth in October, a tick down from 67.0% in September
• Fastenal ended October with a total headcount of 22,210, up 0.8% from September and up 9.0% year-over-year. The biggest one-month gain was in distribution/transportation personnel, which saw headcount grow 2.0% from September to October and ended October up 7.7% year-over-year.

Looking forward, Baird is forecasting Fastenal’s daily sales growth to slow to 8.6% November, which is consistent with normal days-adjusted seasonality.