March Wholesale Data: 2023 Outlook Dips, Inventory Trends Negative

After riding the wave of inflation for the past two years, wholesale distributors are seeing much tougher comparable year-over-year financials as we near the close of 2023’s first quarter. We’ve already seen publicly-traded distributors’ report much more moderate — though still strong — sales and revenue growth in the most recent quarterly earnings reporting period, as the beneficial impacts of pricing have been far less drastic when comparing 4Q23 vs. 4Q22 as opposed to, say, 2Q22 vs. 2Q21 or any time during 2021.  Thus, we expect to see far less gaudy figures reported for the remainder of…