Respondents to ASA’s monthly sales report noted a median sales increase of nearly 7% for October 2024 vs. 2023.

On a month-to-month basis, October sales rebounded 13.6% relative to a soft September that was down nearly 8% vs. August.

Year-to-date sales through Oct. 31, 2024 vs. 2023 increased 1%, while trailing 12-month sales increased 1.7%.

Inventory increased 5% for October 2024 vs. October 2023. The three-month days sales outstanding edged up to 41 days for October.

By primary business emphasis, industrial PVF firms reported solid year-over-year growth of nearly 9%, but their year-to-date and trailing 12-month remain down at -3.2% and -2.8%, respectively.

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PHCP firms and blended PHCP-PVF firms reported sales increases for October. PHCP firms reported sales increased 6% and PHCP-PVF firms reported an increase of nearly 9%.

What Distributors Are Saying:

Comments from respondents to ASA’s monthly sales report:

"Business conditions are up slightly in comparison to last year at this time."

"Business feels slow, but we are ahead of last year. We are seeing a post-election bump in sales activity."

"Despite warm weather, our pipeline remains very strong, supported by our showroom business. We are hoping the cold weather will come as inventory levels are too high."

"Finding quality new hires still seems to be a challenge. Heading into the end of the year, we are in the process of lowering our inventory to match the anticipated lower demand."

"Our business is steady, but not robust. A few projects that were put on hold early in the year are beginning to move a bit with the drop in interest rates. Some anticipate a couple more drops before those projects can get going again. That makes 2025 shape up to look like a very good year."

"Project sales activity continues to be off significantly compared to projects and last year, and service sales activity has declined as well. Customers indicate activity remains muted due to waiting on inflation and interest rates to improve further and moderate weather adversely impacting heating and cooling equipment and accessory sales."

"Sales remained consistent but margins increased slightly. As we move into the holiday season, we expect sales to dip, but we remain cautiously optimistic going into the year 2025."

"We are continuing to see deflation among our commodity-based products. However, we are expecting this to turn around in 2025."

"We continue to have difficulty finding good people, but it seems our customers are also having that same problem. There may not be enough labor to support some of the projects coming up. That tends to open the door for out-of-state contractors, and that is not good for us."

"We had a much better October than expected, but down from last year."