Pittsburgh-based electrical distributor Wesco International had a “record” first-quarter performance in 2023, the company announced when reporting its financials for the January-March period on May 4.

Wesco posted 1Q net sales of $5.5 billion, a 12% year-over-year increase, with organic sales growth of 11%. Sales growth was down sequentially from the distributor’s 15% year-over-year increase in 4Q 2022, but still had a strong 1Q given the market headwinds the industry has faced thus far in 2023.

Wesco’s 1Q sales growth reflected price inflation, volume growth and an improving supply chain, according to a news release. The company’s November 2022 acquisition of Rahi Systems positively impacted net sales by 2.8%, slightly offset by foreign currency fluctuations that had a negative impact of 1.6%.

1Q gross margin was 21.9%, up 60 basis points year-over-year. Operating profit of $346.4 million increased 22% year-over-year while adjusted earnings per share of $3.75 were up 3.3% from 1Q 2022.

Wesco reported 1Q sales for each of the following segments:

• Electrical & Electronic Solutions (EES) had sales of $2.14 billion, up 2.2% year-over-year.
• Communications & Security Solutions (CSS) had sales of $1.7 billion, up 20.8% year-over-year.
• Utility & Broadband Solutions (UBS) had sales of $1.7 billion, up 17.5% year-over-year.

“After delivering an exceptional performance in 2022, we’re off to a strong start this year and once again set new first quarter company records for sales, backlog, margin and profitability,” Wesco President and CEO John Engel said in the release. “The power of our increased scale, industry-leading positions, and expanded portfolio of products, services and solutions is clearly evident in our continued strong performance. Strong secular demand trends and continued execution of our enterprise-wide cross selling and margin improvement programs are driving our sustained growth and market outperformance.”

Wesco was MDM’s No. 1 Electrical, Data & Security Distributor in 2022.