Earnings call transcript: Distribution Solutions Q3 2025 beats EPS forecast

Distribution Solutions Group Inc. (DSGR) reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the third quarter of 2025, with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.40, surpassing the forecasted $0.27 by 48.15%. The company also reported revenue of $518 million, exceeding the forecast of $501.6 million. Despite these positive results, the stock price fell by 3.34% to $29.76 in pre-market trading, reflecting investor concerns over future challenges and market conditions.

Key Takeaways

• EPS of $0.40 beat expectations by 48.15%.
• Revenue reached $518 million, a 10.7% increase year-over-year.
• Stock price dropped 3.34% pre-market despite strong earnings.
• Operational cash flow was $38.4 million, with strategic share repurchases.
• Cautious Q4 outlook due to fewer selling days and economic uncertainties.

Company Performance

Distribution Solutions Group showed robust performance in Q3 2025, with a 10.7% year-over-year increase in revenue, driven by strong demand in sectors like aerospace, defense, and renewables. The company also improved its operational efficiency, generating $38.4 million in cash flow and repurchasing 670,000 shares, showcasing a commitment to returning value to shareholders.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $518 million, up 10.7% year-over-year.
• Earnings per share: $0.40, an 8.1% improvement from the previous year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $48.5 million, representing 9.4% of sales.
• Operational cash flow: $38.4 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Distribution Solutions outperformed expectations with an EPS of $0.40 against a forecast of $0.27, marking a significant surprise of 48.15%. Revenue also surpassed predictions, coming in at $518 million compared to the expected $501.6 million, a positive surprise of 3.26%.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings beat, the stock price declined by 3.34% to $29.76 in pre-market trading. This movement contrasts with the positive earnings results and may reflect broader market uncertainties or investor concerns about the company’s cautious outlook for Q4.

Outlook & Guidance

The company provided a cautious outlook for Q4 2025, citing fewer selling days and ongoing market volatility as potential challenges. However, it remains committed to strategic investments and operational improvements to drive long-term value creation.

Executive Commentary

CEO J. Bryan King emphasized the company’s resilience, stating, "We plan to continue navigating our businesses through market noise and volatility." He also highlighted the alignment and competitive spirit of the teams, saying, "Our teams are highly aligned, competing together to win more."

Risks and Challenges

• Inflation and tariffs: Ongoing economic pressures could impact margins.
• Interest rates: Rising rates may affect borrowing costs and consumer spending.
• Market volatility: Uncertain economic conditions could influence demand.
• Supply chain disruptions: Potential challenges in maintaining operational efficiency.
• Competitive pressures: Intense competition in key sectors could affect growth.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of tariffs on pricing, the challenges in transforming the sales force, and margin pressures within TestEquity and Lawson Products. Executives addressed these concerns, providing insights into strategies for improving margins and operational efficiency.

Full transcript - Distribution Solutions Group Inc (DSGR) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Good day everyone. Welcome to the Distribution Solutions Group third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode and the floor will be open for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Sandy Martin. Please go ahead. Good morning and welcome.

Sandy Martin, Investor Relations, Distribution Solutions Group: To the Distribution Solutions Group’s third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me on today’s call are DSG’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer J. Bryan King and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Ron Knutson. In conjunction with today’s call, we have provided a financial results slide deck posted on the company’s IR website at investor.distributionsolutionsgroup.com. Please note that statements on this call and in today’s press release contain forward-looking statements concerning goals, beliefs, expectations, strategies, plans, future operating results, and underlying assumptions subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. In addition, statements made during this call are based on the Company’s views as of today. The Company anticipates that future developments may cause those views to change and we may elect to update the forward-looking statements made today, but will disclaim any obligation to do so.

Management will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures can be found at the end of our earnings release. The earnings release issued earlier today was posted on the Investor Relations section of our website. A copy of the release has also been included in a current report on Form 8-K filed with the SEC. Lastly, this call is being webcast live on DSG’s Investor Relations website and a replay will be available through November 13th. I will now turn the call over to J. Bryan King.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Thanks, Sandy. Good morning, everyone. I’ll start today with overall highlights for the third quarter and share some perspective on our view of the current market environment and Distribution Solutions Group’s progress on its ongoing strategic initiatives. After that, I will turn the call over to Ron to provide a more detailed review of the financial results. Let’s start on slide 4 with a few key takeaways. Our third quarter results demonstrate the strength and resilience of our business model even as inflation, tariffs, and higher interest rates continue to challenge parts of the U.S. economy. The organization is not standing idle waiting for market tailwinds to pick up, but continues to push the pace of initiatives that will make Distribution Solutions Group a more profitable, durable, and growing business in the long run.

We delivered 10.7% revenue growth in the quarter, supported by strong organic momentum with an average daily sales increase of 6%, plus solid revenue contributions from our 2024 acquisitions. This represents the fourth quarter in a row that we’ve realized an organic sales increase and puts our year-to-date organic sales increase at 4% over 2024. Demand remained particularly healthy across aerospace and defense, renewables, semiconductor-related technology, and industrial power, where production demand continues to accelerate. With solid top line performance inclusive of the significant investments we continue to make on the income statement, we’re pleased to report an increase in our shareholder returns measured through adjusted earnings per share of $0.40 for the third quarter, an increase of 8.1% compared to the same period last year.

We enhanced shareholder returns with more than $20 million of share buybacks in the first nine months of 2025, reflecting our confidence in the company’s trajectory despite a challenging macro environment. We also enjoyed generating strong quarterly operating cash flow of more than $38 million with adjusted EBITDA of $48.5 million. This is on top of strong cash flow generated in the second quarter as well. EBITDA margins for the quarter were 9.4%, primarily impacted by a combination of product and customer mix shifts as well as strategic investments across the verticals. We expect these ongoing initiatives to start realizing returns and improved EBITDA margins in the coming quarters. Importantly, Barry Litwin and the investment we have made in the TestEquity team are moving expeditiously after a comprehensive review of our significant line of business opportunities.

This review has led us to refine our go-to-market strategy, which now focuses more on lines of business and capabilities that unlock growth and margin expansion opportunities. Gexpro Services continues to win wallet share while investing in its capabilities and delivered another record quarter, and our Canadian branch division led by Source Atlantic showed meaningful improvement in gross margin and expense rationalization and are now in line with our shorter-term targets and offering us better line of sight on our longer-term goals. These results reflect solid progress on advancing our focus on disciplined execution of key initiatives, while acknowledging we continue to invest in and refine our expanded processes and results to unlock operational efficiencies and improve profitability across expansive opportunities.

In DSG, we continue to steadily dedicate resources and investment into a list of priorities around internal initiatives despite recognizing we are in a dynamic environment with pronounced quarter-to-quarter marketplace fluctuations that also impact our priority around our profitability progression. Stacking up these internal investment priorities, while essential to long-term value creation, places demands on leadership while introducing short-term financial performance pressure, particularly when end markets are less forgiving. A large thank you from our board, investors, and me goes out to our DSG colleagues for all the hard work and transformative initiatives they are tackling. Currently, with a broad portfolio, we are also enjoying a return to solid momentum in numerous end markets. For instance, we achieved much-anticipated growth in test and measurement throughout the quarter despite continued softness still in electronic production supplies.

Ron will go over other key financial takeaways for the quarter in a moment, but let’s first turn to Slide 5 to cover more in-market revenue trends and strategic updates by business focus. At TestEquity Group, we are pleased to report strong sales growth of 5.8% in the quarter driven by test and measurement, rental and refurbished equipment, environmental chambers, and modest gains in value-added fabrication services. Electronic production supplies were flat as we maintained pricing discipline. TestEquity product mix shifts created downward pressure on gross margins and higher SG&A reflected compensation adjustments and investments in additional management resources and sales incentives and employee related costs including health care. Several specific large new customer programs with competitive pricing and test and measurement weighed on margins. However, our specialty products and VMI offerings continue to represent meaningful higher margin growth opportunities.

The Conrez acquisition, completed in 2024, continues to perform well and has unlocked greater focus, utilization, and profit opportunity as we are driving more rental and used test and measurement interest from our customers, which is prompting us to invest and expand around how rental and used can drive deeper customer relationships, encouraging product depth and geographic reach while further strengthening the broader TestEquity platform with better margin opportunities and customer loyalty. Barry Litwin completed his first 90 days as CEO, much of which was focused around a comprehensive diagnostic of the TestEquity business with the team and a number of resources he brought with him.

The team developed a unifying strategy for the organization that clarified the value proposition across three core: design and test, build and assembly, and maintain and repair, providing a clearer framework for growth, customer engagement, and expanded accountability around revenue and margin and growth mix objectives by lines of business. Barry has restructured the leadership architecture to strengthen execution, enhance functional ownership, and refine roles across digital merchandising and commercial sales. These changes are designed to accelerate growth, build talent depth, and improve organizational speed and agility. Barry has also identified several targeted investments in systems and e-commerce capabilities that will enhance operational effectiveness, unlock company cross-sell, reduce back office resources, and streamline e-commerce sales. The team has undertaken multiple customer satisfaction surveys to pinpoint areas where TestEquity can deliver greater value and is actively developing a refined customer segmentation and go-to-market strategy.

On the product front, the team has identified key opportunities for new product introductions and more strategic private label expansion to unlock incremental growth and drive margin opportunity. While we expect some near term wins for various changes, the full impact of these initiatives will take shape over the next 18 to 30 months, resulting in a structurally stronger, more competitive, and materially higher margin business. Moving to Gexpro Services, we are excited to report that Gexpro Services delivered record adjusted EBITDA dollars in the third quarter on organic revenue expansion of 11.4%. The sustained sales growth was driven by momentum in aerospace and defense, renewables, and technology with an upward production ramp in industrial power. Value creation initiatives include DSG cross-sell acquisition synergies and expanded VMI kitting, manufacturing, and e-commerce offerings. Customers are becoming increasingly interested in Gexpro Services’ domestic manufacturing capabilities to mitigate the tariff impacts.

Our Europe business remains strong overall with a growing focus on diversifying across multiple verticals. Gexpro Services’ recent acquisition of Tech Component Resources in Southeast Asia and an expanded investment in people and locations positions us well to continue growing with industrial and technology customers that have encouraged our presence in the Asia Pacific region. Existing global customers are also requesting Gexpro Services’ global supply chain management capabilities to support their operations more broadly across the EMEA region. We enjoy the partnership and confidence our customers show us by asking us to grow with them both locally and globally across multiple end markets, and our expanding diversified business portfolio enables us to capitalize and grow across macro and micro business cycles. Our capabilities improve our customers’ ability to succeed in an ever-changing marketplace, and their confidence in us is reflected in our extremely low churn and our ever-expanding wallet share.

We also see tailwinds from influences like the Big Beautiful Bill and domestic manufacturing opportunities for U.S. customers seeking to avoid or lower the impact of tariffs. While our sales funnel, especially from existing customers, feels great, we are making very strategic investments in expanding the sales team’s capabilities to drive a longer and larger tail to our strong top line revenue growth. While these investments slightly reduce the near term profitability available with increased investment in our costs from a year ago, the incremental sales we are enjoying are still driving EBITDA dollars higher while the investments are enhancing our already strong customer retention and expanding our sales pipeline. Gexpro Services’ core strength lies in our ability to deliver industry leading total cost of ownership savings to our valued customers through custom supply chain management programs.

These programs focus on high on time deliveries, quality, lean optimization, supplier rationalization, total working capital improvement, and technology. Even with our investments, we are pleased to report sequential EBITDA margin expansion once again for Gexpro Services with a 100 basis point expansion since the first quarter of this year. Expanded geographies and value added capabilities achieved through disciplined execution of operational efficiencies and the benefit of our strategic M&A over the last several years continue to drive structurally stronger margins. We are excited and focused on investing even more deliberately in several additional organic and inorganic priorities to continue to fuel the momentum at Gexpro Services. Overall, Lawson Products’ total revenue increased 3% compared to a year ago, with increases in the majority of our business lines. We enjoyed robust performance of our recent acquisitions S&S.

Our automotive product category achieved sales growth in the high single digit range and S&S. Our safety products business enjoyed similarly strong increases as well. Lawson Products’ legacy business was up 2% and business development initiatives drove higher strategic accounts and government growth in the high single digit range. Although we are not satisfied with our total sales performance for Lawson Products this quarter, we know that economic pressures have negatively influenced many of our customers this year. Lawson Products’ primary focus over the past two years has been executing on its multi year sales force transformation initiative. Over the last 12 months we’ve added over 60 net new sales representatives, bringing our total field sales reps to approximately 930 at the end of September. Most of our newer reps are still scrambling to build a business that covers our significant investment in them.

The Current Environment Even with our enhanced sales resources and tools we are now providing, the sales force has not accelerated the lead time to profitability on new hires at the pace we expected, but we remain committed and optimistic. For instance, while the sales force transformation is still significantly underway, we’re encouraged by the positive momentum across all sales metrics. CRM adoption now exceeds 70% and the metrics we are tracking are trending higher. Our CRM tool, which we continue to evolve, now provides valuable analytical visibility by territory and sales rep, enabling much more data-driven decision making and targeted performance management. We are investing in deeper sales leadership resources, talent, and accountability, and sales continue to ramp for Lawson’s new 24.7 web platform, expanding our customer reach and enhancing engagement.

Although there is more work ahead, Cesar and the team are executing with discipline and we are beginning to see meaningful traction from our key sales initiatives. In the meantime, we are also investing in additional sales support roles, including business development professionals, inside sales reps, strategic account managers, and technical sales specialists, all to help our sales reps become more productive. We are also supplementing our field sales team with service personnel where it makes sense, freeing up more time for our business development. We are balancing our priorities around future investments as we evaluate and refine our processes to better support our sales force to best serve our customers on a sequential basis. Our Canadian branch division sales grew by 7% in local currency in the third quarter, driven primarily by Source Atlantic. We saw better operating expense leverage with fewer restructuring impacts in the quarter.

Gross margins sequentially improved as products, services, pricing, and mix shift initiatives are well underway. We have improved gross margin almost 300 basis points over the last year. Ron will discuss our solid progress on EBITDA margins this quarter as well. We’ve completed two of the four facility consolidations and expect to finalize all major realignments by the end of the calendar year. Although we are still in the early innings, we appreciate that Source Atlantic and Bolt Supply have an attractive market presence, strong customer relationships, and a unique strategic fit in the Canadian marketplace. After a tough initial start as the project revenue in Source Atlantic quickly bled off and wasn’t replaced as the Canadian economy became softer, sales and steady state profitability at Source Atlantic has progressed nicely as the year has developed.

With much of our purchase price for Source Atlantic defined by working capital and real estate, in the first full year of transforming our Canadian business, its free cash flow will have significantly de-risked what we strongly believe was an excellent acquisition to transform our Canadian business while still chasing the profitability objectives we expect to hit within the first years. It’s positive to see the momentum that we’re gaining as the year has developed. With that, I’ll turn it over to Ron for details on our third quarter financials.

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Thank you, Bryan, and good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 6, DSG’s consolidated revenue for the third quarter was $518 million, a 10.7% increase. The $49.9 million increase was driven by a combination of strong organic daily sales increase of 6% and $23.3 million in revenue from our 2024 acquisitions. On a sequential basis, organic daily sales were up 3.1% over the second quarter. For the quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $48.5 million or 9.4% of sales. Source Atlantic compressed our third quarter margins by approximately 11 bps. Adjusted EBITDA dollars were essentially flat versus the second quarter and 30 basis points lower, primarily due to product and customer mix shifts, strategic investments in the business, and higher employee-related costs. Cash flows from operations was $38.4 million for the quarter. This is on top of $33.3 million generated in the second quarter.

GAAP net income per diluted share was $0.14 for the quarter versus $0.46 a year ago, which benefited from a substantial tax benefit. Non-GAAP adjusted EPS was $0.40 for the quarter, an improvement of 8.1% from $0.37 per share a year ago and a sequential increase of 14.3% from Q2 of $0.35 per share. In the first nine months of 2025, we’ve repurchased approximately 670,000 shares, which is positively impacting our EPS return to shareholders. Moving to Slide 7, starting with Lawson, Q3 sales totaled $121.5 million, representing a 3% organic sales increase in average daily sales. Compared to Q2, organic average daily sales were down 2.2%, pressured across most of our segments. For the quarter, Lawson reported adjusted EBITDA of $14 million or 11.5% of sales, down 110 basis points from Q2 on a sequential basis.

The net margin contraction from the prior year was primarily due to continued investments in our sales transformation and higher employee-related costs, in particular health insurance costs compared to the same period last year. We also saw some vendor price increases this quarter from tariff impacts. However, the margin impact was minimal due to strategic pricing actions that we took earlier in the year. As Bryan mentioned, Lawson sales rep counts have increased to approximately 930, up from 860 a year ago, driven by expanded roles that continue to boost growth and productivity. We also continue to leverage our CRM platform to connect our sales reps with our customers more efficiently. We are also pleased with the activity and engagement of Lawson’s enhanced e-commerce channel, which we launched earlier this year. As we work through modifications to the site, we are realizing improved customer conversion ratios.

Turning to Slide 8, third quarter sales for the Canadian segment in U.S. dollars were $60 million, which included $20.1 million of incremental revenue from the Source Atlantic acquisition, which was in for the full quarter this year and only a partial quarter a year ago. Q3 revenue increased sequentially by 7.4%, which is encouraging despite tariff-related market softness for projects in manufacturing, in particular in Eastern Canada. Excluding revenues acquired from Source Atlantic, organic sales for Bolt Supply increased 6.5% over a year ago. The third quarter adjusted EBITDA for the Canadian segment was $5.8 million or 9.6% of sales, a significant increase of 300 basis points over the second quarter. We are making good progress on planned synergies around gross margins and branch consolidations and are well on our way to how we underwrote the business.

Turning to Gexpro Services on Slide 9, third quarter revenue was strong at $130.5 million, up 11.4% from the year-ago quarter from strength in renewable energy, aerospace and defense, and industrial power. Organic average daily sales were up 3.7% sequentially from Q2. As Bryan mentioned, Gexpro Services adjusted EBITDA was $17.8 million, representing a record quarter. This is a 20 basis point improvement from Q2 to 13.6%. Similar to the second quarter results, operating leverage remains strong. Gexpro Services continues to invest in its business to capture top line revenue growth and incremental EBITDA dollars, albeit at slightly lower margin percentages. Gexpro Services continues to capitalize on the acquisition in Southeast Asia through wallet share expansion and cross selling. Just as a reminder, Gexpro Services is facing tougher sales comps heading into the fourth quarter of 2025. Lastly, I’ll turn to TestEquity Group on Slide 10.

Third quarter sales were $206.5 million with average daily sales up 5.8% versus a year ago and up sequentially by 5.9% over Q2. The test and measurement business improved, however, competitive pricing weighed in on margins. Revenue acquired from Conres, which was acquired in the fourth quarter of 2024, was approximately $2 million for the quarter. TestEquity Group’s adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $12.4 million or 6% of sales, down sequentially by 90 bps from the second quarter. Net margins decreased from 7.4% in the prior year quarter primarily due to shifts in customer and product mix as well as higher employee-related expenses, some of which are non-recurring and others that are longer-term investments to improve the business. Key operating initiatives in flight currently include the expansion of service offerings, acquisition integration, pricing disciplines, sales force optimization, digital expansion, and cost containment.

With over 34,000 customers, our go-to-market strategy will continue to evolve to better service our customers with expanded offerings. Moving to slide 11, our diversified business model has been structured to benefit from scale, product adjacencies, and geographic footprint, leveraging five acquisitions completed last year. Since the merger of these businesses in 2022, we have invested nearly $450 million of cash and debt across nine acquired businesses, and at the end of the quarter our debt leverage remained at 3.5 times. Starting at the bottom of this slide, we ended the quarter with total liquidity of $335 million, providing us with flexibility for accretive acquisitions and investing into organic growth initiatives. This foundation continues to underpin our disciplined capital allocation strategy. Again this quarter we achieved positive sales lift through our investments in organic growth. As a management team, we closely manage working capital within each of our verticals.

At the end of September, cash and cash equivalents including restricted cash totaled $82.7 million and net working capital was approximately $486 million, consistent with the second quarter. At the end of the third quarter, we had no outstanding borrowings under our revolving credit agreement, and as J. Bryan King mentioned, we generated $38 million of cash flow from operations for the quarter. As we closely manage our working capital, we continue to look opportunistically at share buybacks and returns. $20 million to our shareholders this year with approximately $6 million still available under our previously board-authorized program. Our free cash flow conversion is approximately 96% over the trailing 12 months, and we compute our ROIC on a TTM basis at approximately 11%. Finally, our first nine months of net CapEx including rental equipment was $19.3 million.

We expect our full year 2025 net CapEx to be in the range of $22 to $25 million or approximately 1% of our revenues. I’ll now turn the call back over to Bryan.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Thank you, Ron. We plan to continue navigating our businesses through market noise and volatility, remaining highly focused on making strategic data-driven decisions that generate long-term value and success through every business cycle. As we look at the fourth quarter, we’re maintaining a cautious outlook given tougher year-over-year comparisons. That said, business activity remains steady and I remain confident in our leadership teams and their ability to execute on their respective value-driving initiatives on their journey to build structurally higher margin businesses that generate strong free cash flow and create accelerating long-term value for our shareholders. Our teams are highly aligned, competing together to win more, and each is accountable and highly incentivized for their progress. We are investing in internal and external resources at every turn to drive an enhanced financial outcome for DSG’s investors.

Many of our investments in the prior years are driving solid improvements to the business. That is evidenced by our ability to report four quarters of sequential top-line revenue growth and to have well more than doubled EBITDA by reinvesting our free cash flow and holding leverage flat since we created DSG three and a half years ago. While some of our 15 acquisitions made over the last four years or so, where we continue to track our underwriting and integration performance, have taken more time and required more heavy lifting to get them to the targets we underwrote, we are confident that all offer strong strategic and financial accretion value to the platform we are creating and will long drive earnings and value for DSG consistent with how we underwrote them.

Based on more recent investments we’ve been making on the income statement, just like the acquisition investments on the balance sheets, we should be held accountable on continuing to perform and drive shareholder profits and unlock improved key performance metrics. You should continue to expect more from us through unlocking enhanced operational performance, continued market share gains, longer-term enhanced profitability unlocks, and improved business momentum relative to whatever economic end market cycles we face. As we look forward to 2026 and beyond, we have a clear line of sight on how our initiatives drive intrinsic value and unlock additional value through increased future run rate earnings and deserving of a higher value assigned to the earnings we enjoy. We will continue to listen to our customers and deliver the products and services that they want and need.

We, informed by our customers and our colleagues, have identified and are strongly pursuing a number of key strategic inorganic opportunities that will strongly enhance our position to serve some of our key markets. We want to personally thank everyone across Distribution Solutions Group for embracing our performance-driven culture based on the core values of transparency, accountability, effort, and empathy. I’m equally grateful to our board and our shareholder partners for their trust in me, our Distribution Solutions Group leadership, and the LKCM Headwater team as we continue advancing this important investment. Together we continue to engage actively with the investment community and will participate in three conferences this November: Baird, Stevens, and the Southwest Ideas Conference. With that, operator, will you please open the line for questions?

Conference Call Operator: Certainly. The floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press Star one on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question you please pick up your handset if listening on a speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold just a moment while we poll for questions. Your first question is coming from Tommy Mull with Stevens. Please pose your question. Your line is live. Morning and thank you.

you for taking my questions.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Morning Tommy.

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Morning Tommy.

Cautious is the word that I think I heard you say regarding your look into fourth quarter, and I’m curious, can you share what October looks like just in terms of the organic pacing? When you say cautious, are we meant to take that as more likely than not? You could be down year over year organic, or just help me parse that a little bit.

Yes, Tommy, this is Ron. I’ll jump in on that one. Just a couple of points relative to the fourth quarter. First, when we look at the number of selling days within the quarter, keep in mind that we had 64 selling days in Q3 2025 and we go down to 61 days at the end of the fourth quarter. If you look at what we did a year ago in the fourth quarter, all in, our sales were a little bit north of about $480 million. Certainly, this quarter posted $518 million. As we think about it sequentially, we’re up. Even though we’re up against tougher comps, even flat sales here in the quarter result in kind of mid single digits.

Looking at it sequentially, going from Q3 into Q4, I will say when we look at October, October is a little skewed because there’s 23 selling days in the month of October. Typically, our ads normally get compressed a bit when you have more selling days within a particular month. I would say we’re not seeing any dramatic shifts. As the third quarter developed, September was our strongest month within the quarter as well. We saw acceleration improvements, average daily sales as we went from July into August and then into September. I’d say that it’s tempered a little bit, but nothing dramatically. The other piece I would just state, and maybe it’s a little cautious as well, is a lot of our customers go through various types of holiday shutdowns and so forth around some of the holidays later in the year.

It’s not that we’re anticipating that that would be anything more than normal in terms of what we’ve experienced in previous fourth quarters. Just keep that in mind as well, where there’s always a little bit of, we’re always up against a little bit of a tougher situation just given what some of our customers are doing around the holidays.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Yeah. I would just say, Tommy, I was probably the culprit on using the word cautious as much as anybody. It was mostly just thinking about the average number of selling days for the quarter. It doesn’t reflect on how I feel about October relative to September. It was just a statement that I was making relative to thinking that we had really strong performance out of Gexpro Services last year in the fourth quarter. We knew we were going up against a good number there. While we had volume and we had both, you know, average daily sales and revenue organically were all up in the third quarter, as were volume finally across all the verticals. That was a nice thing to see in the third quarter, but we were just being cautious in our language.

Fair enough. On the consolidated EBITDA margin percentage side, any big call out that should drive a variance whether positive or negative versus the 9.4% that you just reported?

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Yes. The only thing I would say there, Tommy, is that I think both Bryan and I covered this in our prepared remarks to some degree relative to some of the investments that we’re making into the organization. If I break down the movement either sequentially or from a year ago, even the 110 bps from a year ago, I would say that probably about 30 of that are investments that we’re making that we’ve continued to make into the organization. I would attribute probably 80 of that more towards what I would call timing or non-recurring type of items around incentive accruals or startup of some customers, attracting customers initially at a lower margin to us purchasing advance, purchasing some inventory last year. As I think about that bridge from quarter to quarter, clearly there are some items that are permanent that we continue to invest in the business.

There’s also quite a bit of movement on some of these items that I would call more timing, and that pretty much holds true even looking at it sequentially as well. There’s nothing in the fourth quarter that we have visibility to that is anticipated significant, large one-time items, positive or negative, that we have visibility to today that we would see coming through in the fourth quarter.

Yep. On Gexpro Services, the momentum here is nice to see. You called out some of the drivers, and I’m just curious how durable this is, does the contour of the recovery feel.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Gexpro Services has got a pretty broad base of wallet share and new customer wins that it’s continuing to enjoy, and its backlog or funnel is larger than it’s been in the past of new business opportunities that they’re pursuing. We’ve invested significantly both in being able to address some existing customers’ needs in locations that are costing us some money that we’ve spooled up, as well as some employees that we’ve added that are prior to getting the benefit of revenue. Where we have good visibility, there’s a spooling up of more organic opportunity there.

The acquisitions that we’ve added to Gexpro Services over the last four years, going back even right before the merger, are adding to the capabilities that, particularly with the environment that we’re in on the tariff side, are allowing us to improve the supply chain opportunity both domestically as well as more broadly for a number of the customers that we’ve served for a long time. It’s getting attention from customers that we haven’t served for a long time. The sales cycle in Gexpro Services is long, as we know. It’s the longest that we’ve got, the retention is very high. We’ve made a lot of investments there besides just the acquisitions that are adding talent and capability and some relationship sellers that are helping continue to build out the pipeline.

Now, there’s three or four of the verticals that are hitting on cylinders, and then there’s the industrial power vertical that’s getting stronger. When you have two or three of your verticals that are firing on those cylinders, you look at those relative to what you’ve got in your backlog and verticals that are not performing at peak level at all, and you try and assess where you’re going to be a year or two from now. I don’t have enough of a crystal ball there, but it feels very good and it feels resilient.

Last question for me on the Lawson Products sales force initiatives. You mentioned that there are still some in-flight pieces there, so maybe just give us a state of the union.

Yeah, I would say there’s a lot still in flight there. I think we’ve been trying to build the plane in the air, for sure.

So.

We probably took too long to start focusing on growing our sales force again because we were trying to get more of the internal process improvements and tools available to the sales force. That gave us more of a J curve on our volumes and our ability to serve our customers at the level that we want to. Now that we’ve been adding and filling back in territories that were open, we’ve been able to return to positive volume growth there. That’s been a while coming, but we are still putting a lot of dollars against the transformation. There are dollars associated with resources that we are adding to support the sales force that we’ve called out in the call and talked about for some time, and we’re continuing to put more of those resources in place.

We’re doing some pilot initiatives to try and look at how adding more selling leadership, talent as well as tools and support personnel in key markets might be able to help us drive both a better customer service and more wallet share growth and to turn back on a number of the customers that we see in different markets that are not as actively using our solutions. There’s a lot still going on there. The good news is that the metrics like CRM and sales or order flow per day or salespeople that are participating on making orders every day, those metrics are still moving in our favor. They haven’t moved as fast. The ability to spool up our new sellers and to get them to a level of profitability at the pace that we had expected two years ago when we were starting this initiative.

Part of the reason why we held off hiring new outside sellers or growing that sales force again was that we thought that we would be able to add a bunch of tools and get the sales professionals to a level of revenue that carried them much faster. That’s been slower than we would like for it to have been. While we’re seeing some positive movement there, we’re not seeing it at the level that we expected two years ago. We don’t know whether or not there’s more tweaking that we need to do, which we believe in more sales leadership resources that we’re putting in place to drive more support of those new sellers and how we onboard them.

We are also looking at whether or not the sluggish environment that we’re in for a lot of the customers that are the smaller job shops that Lawson Products sells, that are much lower dollar per, you know, revenue per year relationships than we would have at a Gexpro Services, for instance. That part of our customer base has been more sluggish than the other parts of our customer base where we’ve got larger relationships, including the larger relationships that we have at Lawson Products where those larger strategic accounts are continuing to grow.

Thank you, Bryan. I’ll turn it back.

Thanks, Tommy.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question is coming from Ken Newman with KeyBank. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Hey, good morning, guys.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Morning, Ken.

Morning, Ken. Morning.

Hey, I ended up joining the call.

A little bit late, so sorry.

I missed it, but did you speak to how much tariff-based pricing benefited sales this quarter, and just any thoughts about how you think about price cost into the fourth quarter across the businesses?

We didn’t. What I would tell you is that this quarter had strong volume growth, not just revenue growth. That was for the first time across all of our verticals, we enjoyed volume growth again. Lawson in particular has struggled with pricing being to our benefit, but volume being against us. We returned to volume growth at Lawson and we had volume growth at the other verticals. The pricing is. Ron can probably speak specifically to that. We didn’t take any new initiatives this quarter, but we did have some tariff activity that we did at the beginning of the year and we’ve been very transparent with our customers, particularly at Gexpro Services where we have large relationships and contracts where we’re being very open and transparent and showing exactly what the specific dollar impact is on a relationship.

We don’t have full capture on all of the tariff costs that are flowing through, but the impact to our business has not been as dramatic as it’s been for some of the other companies that we own. In fact, it’s been much more manageable for Distribution Solutions Group than it has been on a lot of the businesses that I’m associated with. Ron, any other additions there?

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: No, I think you covered it, Bryan. The only thing, just maybe a layer deeper, just that overall 6% organic sales increase. If we look at price, volume, mix.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: There.

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: About a third of that was price and about 2/3 of that was volume. I think to Bryan’s comment, all three verticals saw volume, unit volume increase this quarter, which was positive. We have taken some pricing actions certainly earlier in the year at Lawson and then throughout as the tariffs pricing is or the cost increases are coming through, but nothing significantly that’s burdening our overall margin percentages.

Got it.

No, that’s very helpful. Maybe for my follow up, I think I saw loss on TestEquity margins, saw some mix and labor related headwinds this quarter.

Curious.

How long do you expect those higher labor costs to stay on? When do you expect those to roll off, and any visibility on kind of mix normalizing within those two businesses?

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Yeah, look, I’ll take it. First, we’ve had some additional investments that we’ve made on the sales side on both those two businesses, be it commissions or support to higher revenue on the test and measurement piece of the business, or the specific tools and capabilities that we’re adding to our salesforce support, as well as adding a significant number of sellers at Lawson that are not yet profitable or contributing to the P&L. We’ve also had investments on the SG&A side in talent or senior leadership across those two verticals. We also had some expenses there that related to healthcare and some severance and other things that we had that flowed through. I wouldn’t say that it’s specifically inflation more broadly across our costs.

I mean, we are taking compensation actions at times over the last couple years to support our team across those verticals and all of our verticals. The real step up in SG&A has been very deliberate, and it’s focused on trying to drive revenue growth and customer service in the future.

Okay.

Maybe to ask this in a different way, obviously, I know the crystal ball is clear as mud right now, but if you think about a normalizing upcycle, at what point do you kind of get back towards your targeted operating leverage? How much volume do you think you need in order to kind of support that 20%, 20%, 25% EBITDA flow through?

Yeah.

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: The.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Lawson. I think that we probably, and Ron, you may more specifically be able to address this, but the investments that we’ve been making in Lawson at the personnel level, I think that we are probably at a spot where we would expect that the leverage there ought to start working back in our favor. Anytime you spool up a significant number of new sellers and you add a lot of resources around them or above them to support them, that level of expense has been very much a drag on operating leverage. Historically, the operating leverage at Lawson has been in that 20% to 30% or higher. We would expect that over the next year, or as we see the performance and maturing of the sales force, that we’ll start enjoying that sort of leverage again in that business. That’s certainly the way that we’re modeling it.

On TestEquity Group, it’s been a little bit different. You’ve had two dynamics there. One, we’ve got our EPS now where it’s flat, it’s been negative, and we’ve had return to growth on the test and measurement unit volume side. There’s been a mix shift there that has impacted the operating leverage of the business at the same time as we’ve been investing in SG&A. It kind of muddies up, as you put it, the ability to try and extrapolate what our operating leverage is at TestEquity Group, because we’ve been putting a significant amount of deliberate expense into the SG&A line to try, with the leadership change at the top, to get that business organized in a way that we think is going to offer significantly better operating leverage than that business had historically operated around.

There are parts of the TestEquity Group that have really significant contribution margin associated with it, and then there are parts of it, like the test and measurement new business, that’s not going to have as much operating contribution margin but has good stickiness associated with our customers as well as returns on invested capital on that business unit. I guess that’s about an answer that may be about as muddy as the question. I apologize, but that’s a. Ron, any other offerings there that you could help me on?

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Yeah, I think that’s all right, Bryan. You know, when I look at it, even across Distribution Solutions Group in total, most of some of these other items around health insurance, for example, most of that drag happened at TestEquity Group and at Lawson Products. Those are typically pretty spiky. Some quarters you get favorability, other quarters it goes the other direction on you. This quarter went the other direction. If I look at that kind of across the Distribution Solutions Group platform, it’s a 20 basis point drag on our EBITDA margin just for this quarter. The mixed piece that Bryan referenced, if you look at test and measurement, they went from about $30 million in sales in the second quarter to about $35 million here in the third quarter. That piece of the business certainly operates at a lower margin percentage for us.

That’s putting a little bit of downward pressure along with getting into some larger customers from a pricing competitive standpoint as well, which puts some drag, I would say, more specifically on the TestEquity Group business this quarter than on the Lawson Products side. This is adding to the muddiness of it. Lawson Products’ customer shift in more larger strategic customers is putting a little bit of pressure on the Lawson margin.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: I mean, your call out there is a fair one. We would note that TestEquity Group had both a mix shift issue or mix shift, you know, dynamic. I always call it an issue because we like the fact that we were and we saw a nice recovery in the test and measurement activity. We did have a relationship there that we were spooling up, a new relationship with them, and it had a drag initially on the gross margins for the quarter in the test and measurement group part of the business. You had health, you called out health care. We made a bad debt or receivable allowance there for a customer that had not been paying. We had some severance. We had some additional expenses to spooling up new leadership. There were a number of moving parts on the SG&A line, and there was an inventory allowance there.

I think that there were maybe four buckets that added to a lot of the dollar delta there.

Very helpful color, guys.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks, Ken.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question is coming from Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Thanks. Good morning.

Morning, Kevin.

Morning. I wanted to just follow up on the Canada branch margin. Really nice sequential improvement there. It sounds like you still have a couple facility consolidations to go. I’m just trying to think about the sustainability of that margin going forward.

As well as if there’s still a little room for additional uplift there.

Yeah, go ahead, Ron.

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Yeah, I can. I’ll jump in on that. So, Kevin, if we look at, we typically break that business into two separate pieces, right? The Bolt Supply, the legacy Bolt Supply business, and then also the Source Atlantic business as well. I would say Bolt continues to perform really well in that, you know, 13, 14% margin rate. It’s getting a little muddy because of combining the branches and so forth. We clearly, when we underwrote the acquisition of Source Atlantic, had a path to exceeding 10% on that business on a standalone basis. Even on a weighted basis between Bolt and Source, we should be above 10% again. We’re well on our way. We’re not where we want to be yet. We would certainly look to see margin expansion there. I think they’ll see some of the probably lumpiness a little bit in Q4 results as well.

If you look at typically really across DSG, but inclusive of the Canadian operations, Q2 and Q3 are the strongest quarters typically. You get a little bit of deleveraging effect on slower sales based upon some of my comments earlier, just around holiday timing and so forth, but I’d say we’re on our way, but not where we, we’re not at the end state there for sure yet.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Okay, great. That’s helpful. I got to jump to another call here, but I appreciate you taking the question.

Yep, thank you, Kevin.

Ron Knutson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: No problem, Kevin.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: There appear to be no further questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to J. Bryan King for closing remarks.

J. Bryan King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Distribution Solutions Group: Appreciate everybody participating this morning. Thank you for your time. We are encouraged by what we’re seeing out of the business, and we appreciate everybody’s attention to the business. Have a good holiday stretch. Thank you. Bye.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.