Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International released its monthly trends report, showing sales by HARDI distributors declined by 1.6% during February 2025.

The annual sales growth for the 12 months through February 2025 showed an increase of 3.8%.

“A sales decline is always a little disappointing, but this one is due to the one less billing day in February of 2024,” said Brian Loftus, macroeconomic and residental market analyst for HARDI.  “With the same number of billing days, we estimate there would have been sales growth of 3.3%.  That is the sixth consecutive month of sales growth after adjusting for the same number of billing days.”  

The monthly sales survey also calculated distributor’s Days Sales Outstanding, a measure of how quickly customers pay their bills. “The DSO has been turning a bit faster recently and that continued in February,” said Loftus.  “The DSO for February has been near 42 days the past couple of years but was less than 38 days this year, which is comparable to the January results.”

During the past few weeks, HARDI saw gloomy results from the CFO Survey, Consumer Confidence Survey and Consumer Sentiment. “The recent economic indicators have not been encouraging, but we are pleased to see the 10-year bond yield fall from 4.7% at the beginning of the year to near 4.2% recently,” said Loftus.  “Mortgage rates will follow the 10-year yield, so the recent decline will help support the housing market while the broader economy battles the tariff headwinds.”

Learn more at hardinet.org