HARDI’s monthly TRENDS report shows average sales for its distributor members increased by 19.4% in January.

The average annualized growth for the 12 months through January 2018 is 6.9%

“January and February are the two least important revenue-producing months of the year for HARDI distributors,” HARDI Market Research & Benchmarking Analyst Brian Loftus said.  “January sales can be very volatile because of weather disruptions. The results this January got a big boost from the colder- than-normal temperatures that apparently led to some equipment disruptions.”

“We would be skeptical of 19.4% if not for the weather event backing it up,” HARDI Senior Economist Connor Lokar added.  “From an economics perspective, U.S. single-unit housing starts rose 9.2% over January 2017.  The first half of the year will remain near a double-digit growth pace, but we expect that to downshift to a mid-single digit pace by year end.”

The days sales outstanding, a measure of how quickly customers pay their bills, is now at 47 days. “The DSO is up a couple points from the December report,” Loftus said. “A 47 is the absolute midpoint of recent reports for this metric for this time of year.”