Stubborn Demand Softness Prompts Macroeconomic Context

Another quarterly financial reporting period has come and gone, and it wasn’t pretty for industrial distributors. By and large for publicly traded distributors of general industrial, MRO and electrical supplies, results covering April through July reflected continued demand softness that most in the industry expected to flip to accelerated growth by this time of the year. Based on the numbers and commentary provided in July-August’s financial statements and earnings calls with analysts, most firms are still seeing sluggish business conditions that have many of them loweirng their full-year…