Fastenal on Friday reported higher sales and profits in the first quarter of the year while earnings edged up slightly compared to the same quarter last year.
The Minnesota distributor — no. 4 on ID’s 2024 Big 50 — posted $1.96 billion in net sales in the first three months of the year, a 3.4% year-over-year increase despite one fewer selling day in the current window. On a daily average basis, sales were up 5% over that span.
The revenue total reportedly exceeded expectations on Wall Street; company officials said that improved customer contract signings over the past 12 months helped the company overcome “sluggish underlying business activity.”
“We experienced an increase in unit sales in the first quarter of 2025,” company officials said in the earnings release. “This was due to a growth in the number of customer sites spending $10K or more per month with Fastenal and, to a lesser degree, growth in average monthly sales per customer site across all customer spend categories.”
Fastenal officials said gross profit was up 2.6% year-over-year to $884 million, while net income climbed 0.3% to nearly $299 million. Gross profit as a percentage of net sales slipped from 45.5% down to 41.1%, which the company attributed to customer and product mix, higher transportation costs and supplier incentives.
Sales of the company’s flagship fasteners were up 1.1% in the first quarter — the first quarterly increase after seven flat or declining quarters — but that segment continued to lag other products amid sluggish industrial production. Safety products were up by just over 7%, and other “MRO-oriented” product lines, including electrical and jan-san supplies, saw stronger growth than cutting tools, abrasives and other OEM-related categories.
Fastenal also issued its monthly sales numbers for March on Thursday, which showed an 8.3% increase in net sales compared to March of 2024.
