Grainger Posts Double-Digit January Sales Pop
Daily sales at industrial distributor W.W. Grainger Inc. rose more than 10% in January on a constant-currency basis, executives said Feb. 3, adding an optimistic data point to the big jump in the ISM Manufacturing PMI reported less than 24 hours earlier.
The double-digit pop in January organic sales was more than double the 4.6% growth posted in the fourth quarter by Grainger, which is headquartered near Chicago and has more than 4.5 million customers around the world. It’s also several percentage points higher than the 2026 range of 6.5% to 9% that Chairman and CEO D.G. Macpherson and his team are forecasting.
That positive sales discrepancy prompted some analysts to ask whether the Grainger team’s full-year forecast was perhaps too cautious as well as float the possibility of a broad inflection in industrial activity.
Macpherson wasn’t having it even though he acknowledged that sales so far this year are “maybe a little bit better” than expected.
“There’s not really enormous tailwinds that people are seeing from a volume perspective,” he said about recent conversations the Grainger team has been having with large customers. “I think everybody is seeing price, which obviously helps with the revenue numbers. But generally, it’s very, very industry-specific at this point. So you can run the gamut from very high optimism to fairly strong pessimism as well. Overall, I think the mood is okay.”
Early this week, several economic commentators pointed out that the strong January ISM reading hasn’t translated into optimism among executives who provided comments to survey takers. It’s understandable that many leaders are wary of calling—and investing ahead of—a major turn in overall activity after higher sentiment readings in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election in November 2024 didn’t produce the expected boom.
Among them were executives of Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., one of the country’s largest trucking firms, who said Feb. 4 that industrial demand appears ready to grow again but cautioned that things looked similar early last year. Jason Miller, a supply-chain professor at Michigan State University, thinks the same.
“It’s best not to get too excited just yet,” Miller wrote on LinkedIn Feb. 4. “We need February and March to also show strong readings. If this happens, then we will be in a better position to believe that demand for manufactured products is improving.”
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has been in business journalism since the mid-1990s and writes about public companies, markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications, focusing on IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal, T&D World and Healthcare Innovation. He also curates the twice-monthly Market Moves Strategy newsletter that showcases Endeavor stories on strategy, leadership and investment and contributes to other Market Moves newsletters.
With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati in 1997, initially covering retail and the courts before shifting to banking, insurance and investing. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal before being named editor of the Nashville Post in early 2008. He led a team that helped grow the Post's online traffic more than fivefold before joining Endeavor in September 2021.