快扣 (FAST) 2023 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Greetings. Welcome to the Fastenal 2023 First Quarter Earnings Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Taylor Ranta of Fastenal Company. Taylor, you may now begin.

問候。歡迎參加 Fastenal 2023 年第一季度收益結果電話會議。 （操作員說明）請注意，正在錄製此會議。此時，我會將會議轉交給 Fastenal Company 的 Taylor Ranta。泰勒，你現在可以開始了。

Welcome to the Fastenal Company 2023 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This call will be hosted by Dan Florness, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Holden Lewis, our Chief Financial Officer. The call will last for up to 1 hour and will start with a general overview of early results and operations, with the remainder of the time being open for questions and answers.

歡迎來到 Fastenal 公司 2023 年第一季度收益電話會議。本次電話會議將由我們的總裁兼首席執行官 Dan Florness 和我們的首席財務官 Holden Lewis 主持。通話將持續長達 1 小時，首先是對早期結果和運營的一般概述，其餘時間用於提問和回答。

Today's conference call is a proprietary Fastenal presentation and is being recorded by Fastenal. No recording, reproduction, transmission or distribution of today's call is permitted without Fastenal's consent. This call is being audio simulcast on the Internet via the Fastenal Investor Relations homepage, investor.fastenal.com. A replay of the webcast will be available on the website until June 1, 2023, at midnight, Central Time.

今天的電話會議是 Fastenal 專有的演示文稿，由 Fastenal 錄製。未經 Fastenal 同意，不得錄製、複製、傳輸或分發今天的電話會議。此電話會議通過 Fastenal 投資者關係主頁 investor.fastenal.com 在互聯網上進行音頻同步廣播。 2023 年 6 月 1 日中部時間午夜之前，網站上將提供網絡廣播的重播。

As a reminder, today's conference call may include statements regarding the company's future plans and prospects. These statements are based on our current expectations, and we undertake no duty to update them. It is important to note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from anticipated results are contained in the company's latest earnings release and periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and we encourage you to review those factors carefully.

提醒一下，今天的電話會議可能包括有關公司未來計劃和前景的聲明。這些聲明基於我們目前的預期，我們不承擔更新它們的義務。值得注意的是，公司的實際結果可能與預期存在重大差異。可能導致實際結果與預期結果不同的因素包含在公司最新的收益報告和定期向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中，我們鼓勵您仔細審查這些因素。

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Dan Florness.

我現在想把電話轉給 Dan Florness 先生。

Thank you, Taylor, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to the first quarter Fastenal earnings conference call. The -- this call is a little different for Holden and I today because we're at the site of our customer expo that just finished up yesterday. And really pleased with the event. A lot of great customer engagement. One thing nice about the event this year is some of the natural things that were occurring, obviously, 2 and 3 years ago, we didn't have an event because of COVID. Last year, we had an event, but we had to limit the attendance and also because of international travel, we had to limit the attendance. This year, we didn't have those restrictions, so we had a great event.

謝謝泰勒，大家早上好，歡迎來到 Fastenal 第一季度收益電話會議。 - 今天這個電話對 Holden 和我來說有點不同，因為我們在昨天剛剛結束的客戶博覽會現場。對這次活動真的很滿意。很多很棒的客戶參與。今年活動的一件好事是一些自然發生的事情，顯然，在 2 年和 3 年前，由於 COVID，我們沒有舉辦活動。去年，我們舉辦了一場活動，但我們不得不限制出席人數，而且由於國際旅行，我們不得不限制出席人數。今年，我們沒有這些限制，所以我們舉辦了一場盛大的活動。

And there were four areas of focus to the theme of the event this year. One was continuing to accelerate our customers' digital transformation to give them better visibility to what is happening inside their four walls, inside their facilities. The second one was really securing their supply chain. The world has seen a lot of change and a lot of impacts to supply chains over the last several years and really allowing our customers the opportunity to think about their supply chains continually in a more strategic way as we move forward.

今年的活動主題有四個重點領域。一個是繼續加速我們客戶的數字化轉型，讓他們更好地了解他們的四堵牆內、他們的設施內發生的事情。第二個是真正保護他們的供應鏈。在過去的幾年裡，世界發生了很多變化，對供應鏈產生了很多影響，真正讓我們的客戶有機會在我們前進的過程中以更具戰略性的方式不斷思考他們的供應鏈。

The third was power and productivity. A lot of this digital transformation, understanding the elements of your supply chain. It's also about bringing productivity to your -- whether it's your production floor or some element of your operation, we provide the tools to do that. And then the fourth piece was understanding our customers' goals and sharing with them ways that we can serve their goals when it comes to their journey in ESG. And I think those four points resonated well throughout the event.

第三是權力和生產力。很多這種數字化轉型，了解你的供應鏈的元素。這也是為了提高您的生產力——無論是您的生產車間還是您運營的某些要素，我們都提供工具來做到這一點。然後第四部分是了解我們客戶的目標，並與他們分享我們如何在他們的 ESG 之旅中實現他們的目標。我認為這四點在整個活動中引起了很好的共鳴。

Now moving on to the quarter. So first quarter, we had earnings per share of $0.52, an increase of 10.5% over last year. The team had really strong expense management during the quarter and pleased with the incremental margin we were able to produce despite the fact that as you saw in our monthly numbers, the March daily sales came in a bit softer. We're in now our fifth month of ISM below 50% and it had ticked down in March. And we're seeing that in our business, particularly in the fastener side, the OEM piece of the business. And -- but despite that, really impressed with our team's ability to manage through it.

現在轉到季度。因此，第一季度，我們的每股收益為 0.52 美元，比去年增長 10.5%。該團隊在本季度進行了非常強大的費用管理，並對我們能夠產生的增量利潤率感到滿意，儘管事實上正如您在我們的月度數據中看到的那樣，3 月份的每日銷售額略有疲軟。我們現在處於 ISM 低於 50% 的第五個月，並且在 3 月份有所下降。我們在我們的業務中看到了這一點，特別是在緊固件方面，即業務的 OEM 部分。而且 - 但儘管如此，我們團隊的管理能力確實令人印象深刻。

As is -- as we've talked about in prior years, we've done a really nice job of managing pieces of our business if we compare to pre-COVID and post-COVID. And I'm sorry for that beeping in the background. My laptop's here and -- but if you look at operating costs as a percentage of sales, in the first quarter of 2019, operating costs were 27.8% of sales. In the first quarter of 2023, they were 24.6%. And it's really about all the changes we've made to the organization. A, our average branch is larger today than ones back in 2019. More of our business is coming from Onsite. We've done a nice job of digitizing our business to bring efficiencies to it, and you see that shining through.

事實上——正如我們在前幾年談到的那樣，如果我們與 COVID 之前和 COVID 之後相比，我們在管理業務方面做得非常好。我很抱歉在後台發出嗶嗶聲。我的筆記本電腦在這裡——但如果你看運營成本佔銷售額的百分比，在 2019 年第一季度，運營成本佔銷售額的 27.8%。 2023 年第一季度，這一比例為 24.6%。這實際上是關於我們對組織所做的所有更改。答，我們今天的平均分支機構比 2019 年的分支機構要大。我們更多的業務來自現場。我們在將業務數字化以提高效率方面做得很好，您會看到這一點。

The other piece is as we understand better our engagement with our customer and their needs, and as supply chains have improved globally, we've also been able to not only lower our days on hand of inventory from what we were seeing 1 year ago as we -- in 6 months ago, as we deepened our inventory but where our business was prepandemic. So we've taken about 3 weeks' worth of inventory out of the network over that entire time frame and really impressed with our team's ability to do that.

另一部分是因為我們更好地了解我們與客戶的互動及其需求，並且隨著全球供應鏈的改善，我們不僅能夠將我們的庫存天數從 1 年前的情況下縮短為我們——在 6 個月前，當我們加深庫存時，我們的業務處於大流行前。因此，在整個時間範圍內，我們從網絡中取出了大約 3 週的庫存，我們團隊的能力令人印象深刻。

Finally, if you manage your business well, manage your expenses well, managing your working capital well, it's a distribution business, you see that show up in your cash flow. So our operating cash flow was $389 million, which was 132% of earnings and was 70% higher than a year ago. And so about $160 million of additional operating cash that we generated in the quarter. Our CapEx -- net CapEx, is very similar in both periods. So a very strong free cash flow, which puts us in a position to invest in the business or return to our shareholders. And we continued that pattern and was able to pay out a nice dividend in the first quarter. And then last night, we just announced the second quarter dividend, and -- of about $200 million a quarter, we're paying out right now in dividends.

最後，如果你管理好你的業務，管理好你的費用，管理好你的營運資金，這是一個分銷業務，你會看到它出現在你的現金流中。因此，我們的經營現金流為 3.89 億美元，佔收益的 132%，比一年前高出 70%。因此，我們在本季度產生了大約 1.6 億美元的額外運營現金。我們的資本支出——淨資本支出在兩個時期非常相似。因此，非常強勁的自由現金流使我們能夠投資業務或回報股東。我們延續了這種模式，並能夠在第一季度支付可觀的股息。然後昨晚，我們剛剛宣布了第二季度的股息，而且——每季度約 2 億美元，我們現在正在支付股息。

Moving to Page 4 of the [foot] book. So Onsite, we signed 89 in the quarter. Active sites finished at 1,674, so about a 16% increase from first quarter last year. If you ignore the transferred sales that come from the branch when we open an Onsite, our Onsite business grew about 20% Q1 to Q1, so strong performance. We remain steadfast in our intention to sign 375 to 400 Onsites this year. Number was a little bit weaker in the first quarter, and most of that we saw in March. And -- but when I think of the engagement going on at the event here the last several days, I feel good about where we're going to be in the next 6 months.

移動到 [foot] 書的第 4 頁。所以在現場，我們在本季度簽下了 89 個。活躍站點數量為 1,674，比去年第一季度增長了約 16%。如果你忽略我們開設現場時來自分支機構的轉移銷售額，我們的現場業務第一季度到第一季度增長了約 20%，表現非常強勁。我們仍然堅定地打算今年簽署 375 到 400 個現場。第一季度的數字略有下降，其中大部分是在 3 月份看到的。而且 - 但當我想到過去幾天在這裡的活動中進行的參與時，我對未來 6 個月的發展感到滿意。

If I look at FMI technology, an incredibly strong performance by the team this quarter. We've talked in the past about this idea of we build infrastructure to support 100 signings per day. And during COVID, our numbers dropped from the upper 70s, low 80s neighborhood as we build up towards that ability to sign 100 a day. We dropped down in the 60s. And it's slowly -- start our way back. Last year, in the first quarter, we signed 83 a day. This year, in the first quarter, we signed 92 per day. In the month of March, we signed 99 per day. So really strong performance by the team. And you can see that continuing to expand in our platform. Our FMI for the quarter was 39.4%. In the month of March, we broke 40% for the first time ever. And really pleased, and we feel good about our goal of signing between 23,000 and 25,000 for the year.

如果我看一下 FMI 技術，本季度團隊的表現令人難以置信。我們過去曾討論過構建基礎設施以支持每天 100 次簽約的想法。在 COVID 期間，我們的人數從 70 年代的上半部分下降到 80 年代的下半部分，因為我們正在朝著每天簽署 100 人的能力發展。我們在 60 年代下降了。它正在慢慢地——開始我們的回歸。去年第一季度，我們每天簽約 83 人。今年第一季度，我們每天簽92個。三月份的時候，我們每天簽99個。團隊的表現非常出色。你可以看到它在我們的平台上繼續擴展。我們本季度的 FMI 為 39.4%。 3 月份，我們有史以來第一次突破 40%。真的很高興，我們對今年簽約 23,000 到 25,000 人的目標感到滿意。

As we've seen in prior quarters, we continue to see really strong growth in e-commerce. Recall that last fall, that broke 20% of revenue for the first time. I believe this quarter, we're at about 22%. And then finally, if you roll all those pieces together, our digital footprint came in at 54% of sales versus 47% a year ago. And in the month of May -- March, excuse me, we hit 55%. And our goal is to drive that to 65% later in the year. Time will tell if we're able to accomplish that with a long-term goal of -- we believe that number is about 85% of our business is going through some type of digital footprint.

正如我們在前幾個季度看到的那樣，我們繼續看到電子商務的強勁增長。回想一下去年秋天，這首次突破了收入的 20%。我相信本季度，我們的比例約為 22%。最後，如果將所有這些部分匯總在一起，我們的數字足跡佔銷售額的 54%，而一年前為 47%。在五月份——三月份，不好意思，我們達到了 55%。我們的目標是在今年晚些時候將這一比例提高到 65%。時間會證明我們是否能夠通過長期目標實現這一目標——我們相信，我們大約 85% 的業務正在經歷某種類型的數字足跡。

With that, I'll turn it over to Holden.

有了這個，我會把它交給霍爾頓。

Great. Thank you, Dan. Before diving into the details of the quarter on Slide 5, I wanted to build a little bit on Dan's earlier comments in his prepared remarks to offer a little bit of perspective on the overall state of our business.

偉大的。謝謝你，丹。在深入了解幻燈片 5 中本季度的詳細信息之前，我想在 Dan 之前在他準備好的發言中發表的評論的基礎上，對我們業務的整體狀況提供一些看法。

If you recall, simultaneous with the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Fastenal accelerated its technology deployment and shifted the structure and priorities of our sales effort. Those actions are adversely affecting short-term sales, though we continue to grow our Onsite and FMI basis as well as our Digital Footprint penetration, and we continue to achieve historical levels of market outgrowth. This also adds an incremental annual mix-related gross margin pressure.

如果您還記得，在 2020 年大流行病爆發的同時，Fastenal 加快了技術部署，並改變了我們銷售工作的結構和重點。儘管我們繼續擴大我們的現場和 FMI 基礎以及我們的數字足跡滲透率，並且我們繼續實現市場增長的歷史水平，但這些行動對短期銷售產生了不利影響。這也增加了與年度組合相關的毛利率壓力。

However, those changes need to be weighed against the benefits of the rest of our business. Relative to the prepandemic business, we have begun to generate meaningful labor productivity and reduced the cost footprint of our facilities. As a result, the incremental margin from the first quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2023 of 24% is appreciably greater than what we saw from the first quarter of '15 to the first quarter of '19 of 16.2%, and we've improved our capacity for leverage over time. At the same time, from the first quarter of '19 to the first quarter of '23, our inventory days have declined from 175 to 154 days despite inflation and supply chain disruption. And our receivables days have fallen from 56 to 55 days despite growth in our national accounts mix.

然而，這些變化需要與我們其他業務的好處進行權衡。相對於大流行前的業務，我們已經開始產生有意義的勞動生產率，並減少了我們設施的成本足跡。因此，從 2019 年第一季度到 2023 年第一季度 24% 的增量利潤率明顯高於我們從 15 年第一季度到 19 年第一季度的 16.2%，而且我們'隨著時間的推移，我們提高了我們的槓桿能力。與此同時，從 19 年第一季度到 23 年第一季度，儘管通貨膨脹和供應鏈中斷，我們的庫存天數從 175 天減少到 154 天。儘管我們的國民賬戶組合有所增長，但我們的應收賬款天數已從 56 天減少到 55 天。

The Blue Team has sharpened our differentiation in the marketplace while sustainably improving the leverageability of our cost structure and lowering our asset intensity. We're a stronger, more productive business today than we were prior to the pandemic, and that is very clear in these first quarter 2023 results. So let's jump into those.

藍隊加強了我們在市場上的差異化，同時持續提高了我們成本結構的槓桿能力並降低了我們的資產強度。與大流行之前相比，我們今天是一家更強大、生產力更高的企業，這在 2023 年第一季度的業績中非常明顯。因此，讓我們進入這些。

Daily sales increased 9.1% in the first quarter of 2023. February storms had a modest 20 to 40 basis point negative impact, while currency was a 70 basis point drag. There are several other items affecting sales. First, pricing continues to moderate. It contributed 290 to 320 basis points to growth in the period, down approximately 290 basis points from the first quarter of 2022 and down approximately 60 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2022. This trend is not a surprise and will likely continue through 2023.

2023 年第一季度的日銷售額增長了 9.1%。2 月的風暴產生了 20 到 40 個基點的溫和負面影響，而貨幣則拖累了 70 個基點。還有其他幾個影響銷售的項目。首先，定價繼續溫和。它為該期間的增長貢獻了 290 至 320 個基點，比 2022 年第一季度下降了約 290 個基點，比 2022 年第四季度下降了約 60 個基點。這一趨勢並不令人意外，並且可能會持續到 2023 年。

Second, we continue to see weakness in several major retailer customers, our international business and our construction and reseller businesses. These dynamics are unchanged since the third quarter of 2022. Our retailer customers have tightened their belts with respect to facilities and labor, which also affected our non-North American business, along with a strong dollar in geopolitical events. Softer construction reflects the conscious decision we made to position our branches to focus on larger key accounts, which is contributing to better labor leverage.

其次，我們繼續看到幾個主要零售商客戶、我們的國際業務以及我們的建築和經銷商業務疲軟。自 2022 年第三季度以來，這些動態沒有改變。我們的零售商客戶在設施和勞動力方面勒緊褲腰帶，這也影響了我們的非北美業務，以及地緣政治事件中的強勢美元。軟結構反映了我們有意識地決定將我們的分支機構定位為專注於更大的關鍵客戶，這有助於提高勞動力槓桿率。

Third, manufacturing and large accounts continue to perform strongly, reflecting investments in Onsite and changes to our branch structure and sales roles. Even so, we did see a downshift in broader market activity in March as represented by slower DSR growth of 6.8%, including just 2.3% daily growth in fasteners.

第三，製造業和大客戶繼續表現強勁，反映了對現場的投資以及我們分支結構和銷售角色的變化。即便如此，我們確實看到 3 月份更廣泛的市場活動有所放緩，表現為 6.8% 的 DSR 增長放緩，其中緊固件的日增長率僅為 2.3%。

Now 1 month does not make a trend. It's too early to have a good read on April and we don't have a lot of forward visibility. We do continue to anticipate that we will outgrow our marketplace, which frankly isn't growing right now. However, the quarter did finish on a softer note.

現在1個月沒有趨勢。現在就對 4 月份進行良好的解讀還為時過早，而且我們沒有太多的前瞻性可見性。我們確實繼續預期我們將超越我們的市場，坦率地說，它現在沒有增長。然而，該季度確實以較為溫和的基調結束。

Now to Slide 6. Operating margin in the first quarter of 2023 was 20.2%, up from 20% in the prior year. The incremental margin -- incremental operating margin was 22.7%. Gross margin was 45.7%, down 80 basis points from the prior year. This decline is entirely due to product and customer mix as we experienced widening sales growth outperformance of non-fasteners or fasteners and Onsites over non-Onsites. Price/cost was still negative year-over-year, but narrowed meaningfully versus the fourth quarter. The remaining gap is largely in our other products category, where pricing actions in the first quarter of 2023 only went into place in February while in fasteners lower costing eliminated the negative price/cost we experienced in the second half of 2022.

現在轉到幻燈片 6。2023 年第一季度的營業利潤率為 20.2%，高於去年同期的 20%。增量利潤率——增量營業利潤率為 22.7%。毛利率為 45.7%，較上年下降 80 個基點。這種下降完全是由於產品和客戶組合，因為我們經歷了非緊固件或緊固件和現場的銷售增長超過非現場。價格/成本同比仍為負，但與第四季度相比大幅收窄。剩餘的差距主要在我們的其他產品類別中，2023 年第一季度的定價行動僅在 2 月份實施，而在緊固件方面，較低的成本消除了我們在 2022 年下半年經歷的負價格/成本。

GAAP expenses were higher with inbound shipments declining as we adjusted our stocking to reflect a smoother supply chain. And then on the other side of the ledger, contribution to margin from freight was better than anticipated. We saw annual and sequential declines in both container costs and containers purchased on the import side and record freight revenues allowed for good leverage of our captive fleet expenses. These dynamics are likely to persist for the next couple of quarters.

由於我們調整了庫存以反映更順暢的供應鏈，因此 GAAP 費用較高，而入境出貨量下降。然後在賬本的另一邊，運費對利潤率的貢獻好於預期。我們看到集裝箱成本和在進口方購買的集裝箱的年度和環比下降，創紀錄的貨運收入使我們能夠很好地利用自備船隊費用。這些動態可能會在接下來的幾個季度持續存在。

On the operating expense side, we generated 20 basis points of leverage from occupancy costs as branch closings over the past 12 months produced a slightly lower facility expense. We generated 80 basis points of leverage from payroll expenses. Total incentive pay for the company in the first quarter of 2023 was the second highest on record for our first quarter. However, with pretax growth in the first quarter of 2023 being roughly 1/3 of the pretax growth in the first quarter of 2022, total incentive pay for the company was down high single digits. Other operating expenses benefited from lower bad debt costs, lower selling-related transportation costs and higher profits from asset sales which was largely offset by higher costs for IT, general insurance and sales-related travel. Putting it all together, we reported first quarter 2023 EPS of $0.52, up over 10% from $0.47 in the first quarter of 2022.

在運營費用方面，我們從入住成本中獲得了 20 個基點的槓桿作用，因為過去 12 個月的分支機構關閉導致設施費用略有下降。我們從工資支出中產生了 80 個基點的槓桿。公司在 2023 年第一季度的總激勵薪酬是我們第一季度的第二高記錄。然而，由於 2023 年第一季度的稅前增長率約為 2022 年第一季度稅前增長率的 1/3，公司的激勵薪酬總額下降了高個位數。其他運營費用受益於較低的壞賬成本、較低的銷售相關運輸成本和較高的資產銷售利潤，這在很大程度上被 IT、一般保險和銷售相關旅行的成本增加所抵消。綜上所述，我們報告 2023 年第一季度每股收益為 0.52 美元，比 2022 年第一季度的 0.47 美元增長超過 10%。

Now turning to Slide 7. We generated $389 million in operating cash in the first quarter of 2023, or approximately 132% of net income in the period. I'll provide a bit more color in a moment, but this improvement in our conversion rate reflects working capital swinging from a significant use of cash in the first quarter of 2022 to a source of cash in the first quarter of 2023. This strong cash flow allowed us to reduce debt in the period, putting net debt at 10.9% in the first quarter of 2023, up slightly from 10.4% in the first quarter of 2022, but down from 14.9% in the fourth quarter of 2022.

現在轉到幻燈片 7。我們在 2023 年第一季度產生了 3.89 億美元的運營現金，約佔該期間淨收入的 132%。我稍後會提供更多顏色，但我們轉換率的這種提高反映了營運資金從 2022 年第一季度的大量現金使用轉變為 2023 年第一季度的現金來源。這種強勁的現金流動使我們能夠在此期間減少債務，使 2023 年第一季度的淨債務為 10.9%，略高於 2022 年第一季度的 10.4%，但低於 2022 年第四季度的 14.9%。

Year-over-year, accounts receivable was up 7.3% on higher customer demand and an increase in the mix of larger key account customers, which tend to have longer terms. And this was partly offset by an improvement in receivables quality. Inventories rose 3.2%. Inflation was not a material contributor to inflation growth in the period. Further, as indicated earlier, normalization of global supply chains is allowing us to unwind the layer of inventory that we intentionally built up in late 2021 and early 2022 to manage what had been significant product bottlenecks. We believe the process of rightsizing inventory will continue through 2023 with additional releases of cash as the year progresses.

與去年同期相比，應收賬款增長 7.3%，原因是客戶需求增加以及期限較長的大客戶組合增加。這在一定程度上被應收賬款質量的改善所抵消。存貨上升 3.2%。通貨膨脹並不是這一時期通貨膨脹增長的重要因素。此外，如前所述，全球供應鏈的正常化使我們能夠解除我們在 2021 年底和 2022 年初故意建立的庫存層，以管理曾經是重大產品瓶頸的問題。我們認為，調整庫存的過程將持續到 2023 年，並隨著時間的推移釋放更多現金。

Net capital spending in the first quarter of 2023 was approximately $31 million. Our range for net capital spending in 2023 remains $210 million to $230 million, and our first quarter spending being behind that pace reflects timing of expenditures. Over the course of 2023, we expect higher spending on hub investments, fleet equipment and IT equipment.

2023 年第一季度的淨資本支出約為 3100 萬美元。我們 2023 年的淨資本支出範圍仍為 2.1 億美元至 2.3 億美元，而我們第一季度的支出落後於這一速度反映了支出的時間安排。在 2023 年期間，我們預計在樞紐投資、車隊設備和 IT 設備方面的支出會增加。

With that, operator, we'll turn it over to you for questions and answers.

有了這個，接線員，我們會把它交給你來提問和回答。

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Chris Dankert with Loop Capital Markets.

（操作員說明）我們的第一個問題來自 Loop Capital Markets 的 Chris Dankert。

I guess, first off, thinking about conversations with RVPs right now. How do they feel about adding FTEs or kind of management there? Just how are we thinking about labor management today and growth kind of going forward?

我想，首先，考慮現在與 RVP 的對話。他們對在那裡增加 FTE 或某種管理感覺如何？我們如何看待今天的勞動力管理和未來的增長？

We've talked about labor management, the RVPs really coming into this year. And the premise was when you look at where the PMI is, when you look at the trend in industrial production, we need to be looking forward and really have a plan to be cautious about hiring.

我們已經討論了勞動管理，RVPs 真正進入今年。前提是當你看 PMI 在哪裡，當你看工業生產的趨勢時，我們需要向前看，並且真的有計劃要對招聘持謹慎態度。

Now in January and February, I'll tell you that demand grew pretty healthy, and I think that we added people sort of related to that. In March, obviously, we called out, the demand softened a little bit. I would also point out that our hiring adds softened a little bit in March as well. We've always talked about how we can react fairly quickly to changes that we're seeing.

現在在 1 月和 2 月，我會告訴你需求增長非常健康，我認為我們增加了與此相關的人員。顯然，在 3 月份，我們呼籲，需求有所軟化。我還要指出，我們的招聘在 3 月份也有所減少。我們一直在談論我們如何能夠對我們看到的變化做出相當快的反應。

And so the message to the field has been, you have to be prepared to adjust for a down shift in demand. And again, that's not a message we just conveyed. We entered the year having that same conversation. And I think that they have been really responding by adding resources where they need to add it. By adding the right resources, we continue to see the mix of part-timers growing in the overall piece of our business, right? Where we've added full-timers, a significant portion of those were made in India, right?

因此，向該領域傳達的信息是，您必須做好調整以應對需求下滑的準備。再一次，這不是我們剛剛傳達的信息。我們帶著同樣的談話進入了這一年。而且我認為他們通過在需要添加的地方添加資源來真正做出響應。通過添加合適的資源，我們繼續看到兼職人員的組合在我們的整體業務中不斷增長，對嗎？在我們增加全職員工的地方，其中很大一部分是在印度製造的，對吧？

So I think that the organization is focused on the right metrics to understand what they need to be doing from a labor standpoint. I think they're executing on that. And I was encouraged that as demand slowed down in March, so did the sort of the hiring adds. So I think we're doing the right things.

因此，我認為該組織專注於正確的指標，以從勞動力的角度了解他們需要做什麼。我認為他們正在執行。令我感到鼓舞的是，隨著 3 月份需求放緩，招聘人數也有所減少。所以我認為我們正在做正確的事情。

That's great color. And then again, just thinking about the CSP growth seems to be lagging a bit more relative to the rest of the business here. Does that change any of the calculus around the pace of closures there or kind of how you're positioning the business from a channel approach perspective?

那是很棒的顏色。再一次，僅僅考慮 CSP 的增長似乎相對於這裡的其他業務要滯後一些。這是否會改變有關關閉速度的任何計算，或者您如何從渠道方法的角度定位業務？

By CSP growth, what are you referring to?

CSP 增長指的是什麼？

Just the nonnational accounts piece of the business, obviously under growing national accounts and Onsite. I guess my assumption is that most of that is the more traditional branches, correct?

只是業務的非國民賬戶部分，顯然在不斷增長的國民賬戶和現場。我想我的假設是其中大部分是更傳統的分支機構，對嗎？

So remember that our traditional branches are -- they support not only the local businesses that you're referring to, but they do support the national accounts business as well. But yes, I think you're referring to the nonnational accounts sector on our release. So thank you for that clarification.

所以請記住，我們的傳統分支機構是——它們不僅支持您所指的本地企業，而且還支持國民賬戶業務。但是，是的，我認為您指的是我們發布的非國民賬戶部門。謝謝你的澄清。

The -- when you think about what's happening in sort of the construction, the reseller, traditionally, there's been a lot of smaller customers there, right? I mean what confused me is when you talked about CSP, right, CSP was our old stocking model that we began to unwind a few years ago. That CSP was intended to draw in that smaller local construction customer, provide them a high degree of service in the local market and things of that nature. And our priorities in the branch have shifted a little bit, trying to move that customer online and creating a sort of time to focus on some of those larger customers in the market.

- 當你考慮建築中發生的事情時，經銷商，傳統上，那裡有很多小客戶，對吧？我的意思是讓我感到困惑的是當你談到 CSP 時，對，CSP 是我們幾年前開始放鬆的舊庫存模型。該 CSP 旨在吸引較小的本地建築客戶，為他們提供本地市場和類似性質的高級服務。我們在分支機構的優先事項發生了一些變化，試圖將客戶轉移到網上並創造一種時間來專注於市場上一些較大的客戶。

And I can't say that I'm surprised by what we're seeing. I think that the relative weakness you see in construction relative to manufacturing, which, again, is part of what we're trying to achieve, I think that, that is really -- those that's really related to the difference you're seeing in the national accounts versus the nonnational accounts growth as well. So I think those things are all related. Does that get to your question?

我不能說我對我們所看到的感到驚訝。我認為你在建築業中看到的相對於製造業的相對弱點，這再次是我們正在努力實現的目標的一部分，我認為，這真的 - 那些與你所看到的差異真正相關的那些國民賬戶與非國民賬戶的增長也是如此。所以我認為這些事情都是相關的。這能解決你的問題嗎？

That does. That makes it ton of sense. I'll leave it there.

確實如此。這很有意義。我會把它留在那裡。

Our next question is from the line of Steve Volkmann with Jefferies.

我們的下一個問題來自 Jefferies 的 Steve Volkmann。

Can I just pull on that thread slightly one more time, Holden. How long do you think that transition takes in the construction-type business where you sort of move away from some of these smaller customers? I assume that's a process that lasts 1 year or 2, I don't know. How long do you think that goes on?

霍爾頓，我能再稍微拉一下那條線嗎？您認為建築類業務的轉型需要多長時間才能擺脫其中一些較小的客戶？我假設這是一個持續 1 年或 2 年的過程，我不知道。你認為這會持續多久？

I don't love the phrase move away from those type of customers. The truth is we're trying to service them through a different model, but setting aside the semantic. I suspect just looking at how that cadence has played out in the preceding, call it, 15 months, I suspect that we'll probably have some softness in that area. That transition period will probably last the bulk of this year.

我不喜歡遠離這些類型的客戶這個短語。事實上，我們正在嘗試通過不同的模型為他們提供服務，但擱置了語義。我懷疑只是看看這種節奏在之前的表現如何，稱之為 15 個月，我懷疑我們在那個領域可能會有一些疲軟。這一過渡期可能會持續今年的大部分時間。

I think as we get into Q4 and into next year, I think you begin to sort of lap those comps. And I think we're probably in a position where it doesn't represent the drag on our business that it does today.

我認為當我們進入第四季度和明年時，我認為你開始在某種程度上超越這些組合。而且我認為我們可能處於這樣的位置，它並不代表它今天對我們業務的拖累。

So I think you're right to look at it as a transition because I think that's what it is. And once we lap that transition, I think the growth that you're seeing today in those manufacturing customers and those large customers, that's going to really begin to shine as we sort of work through that transition over the next 2 or 3 quarters.

所以我認為你將其視為過渡是正確的，因為我認為它就是這樣。一旦我們完成了這種轉變，我認為你今天在那些製造客戶和那些大客戶中看到的增長，隨著我們在接下來的 2 或 3 個季度中完成這種轉變而真正開始閃耀。

Also, if you think of the chart we've shared in January of each of the last several years, we talk about branch consolidations, we're near the end of that process. So if you think about -- if you think just about our customer segments, so the customer where we're highly engaged from a Digital Footprint perspective, we are their supply chain partner. Those customers rarely, if ever, come into one of our facilities. They probably don't even know where we're located.

此外，如果你想想我們在過去幾年的每一年 1 月份分享的圖表，我們談論的是分支合併，我們接近這個過程的尾聲。因此，如果您考慮 - 如果您只考慮我們的客戶群，那麼從數字足蹟的角度來看我們高度參與的客戶，我們就是他們的供應鏈合作夥伴。這些客戶很少（如果有的話）進入我們的設施之一。他們可能甚至不知道我們所在的位置。

And so if you're in a market and you consolidate a few locations, you are actually moving further away from this other segment of customer. And so if you look at where we get to that ultimate branch count, we're probably a year away of being at that point. And that ties right into Holden's comment as well.

因此，如果您在一個市場中並合併了幾個地點，那麼您實際上正在遠離其他客戶群。所以如果你看看我們從哪裡得到最終的分支數，我們可能還需要一年的時間才能達到那個點。這也與 Holden 的評論有關。

Yes. And so looping that back to Chris' comment earlier, pardon the pun, I failed to mention that. I mean that's another reason why those smaller customers have been relatively weaker as well because a lot of times when you go to that branch consolidation, Dan indicated, that's the customer that no longer is visiting that location that would have otherwise been there. So that's an element of that as well.

是的。所以循環回到克里斯之前的評論，請原諒雙關語，我沒有提到這一點。我的意思是，這也是為什麼那些較小的客戶也相對較弱的另一個原因，因為很多時候當你去那個分支機構合併時，Dan 表示，那些客戶不再訪問那個本來會在那裡的位置。所以這也是其中的一個要素。

Right. Got it. Yes. Apologies for the semantics, I was struggling for something better unsuccessfully. But can I switch slightly. When you talk about some of the deceleration that you're seeing, it's kind of an interesting dynamic. Do you have visibility? Do you think your customers are destocking because the supply chains are now better and so that might be part of what we're seeing? Or do you think it's actual sort of end market slowdown?

正確的。知道了。是的。為語義道歉，我一直在努力爭取更好的東西，但沒有成功。但是我可以稍微切換一下嗎。當你談論你所看到的一些減速時，這是一種有趣的動態。你有知名度嗎？您是否認為您的客戶正在去庫存，因為供應鏈現在更好了，所以這可能是我們所看到的一部分？或者你認為這是真正的終端市場放緩？

And the other overlay that's interesting is that you would think that production rates would actually kind of go up at your customers as supply chains normalize rather than down. So I'm just curious if you have any visibility into any of that, and then I'll pass it on.

另一個有趣的疊加是，你會認為隨著供應鏈正常化而不是下降，你的客戶的生產率實際上會上升。所以我很好奇你是否了解其中任何一個，然後我會把它傳遞下去。

Yes. So the feedback from the regionals was really touched on both things that you brought up, Steve. One is they did talk about how as supply chains normalize, you're seeing suppliers of product begin to shave back their production simply because their customers can now -- they may have tried to hold extra product, and now they can sort of back that up a little bit. So there's an element of adjusting to the supply chain.

是的。因此，來自地區的反饋確實觸及了你提出的兩件事，史蒂夫。一是他們確實談到了隨著供應鏈的正常化，你會看到產品供應商開始削減產量，僅僅是因為他們的客戶現在可以——他們可能試圖持有額外的產品，現在他們可以在一定程度上減少產量一點點。因此，有一個調整供應鏈的因素。

But I also did get a number of comments from regionals that they're also seeing our customers just tightened their wallets a bit, both in terms of capital spending as well as operating expenses. And so I think there's a little bit of both of those things, those dynamics playing out.

但我也確實從地區獲得了一些評論，他們也看到我們的客戶在資本支出和運營支出方面都收緊了他們的錢包。所以我認為這兩種情況都有一點，這些動態正在發揮作用。

The other piece I'll -- up from an insite perspective, if you think about our business from a product line and product use perspective, if I go back to January, so OEM fasteners is 20%, 22% of our revenue, kind of low 20s. That business was growing around 13.5% in January. In March, it grew 7%. So that is production dropping off. If I contrast that with safety, for example, our safety business grew stronger in March than it did in January.

另一件我會 - 從現場的角度來看，如果你從產品線和產品使用的角度考慮我們的業務，如果我回到 1 月份，那麼 OEM 緊固件占我們收入的 20％，22％，種類低 20 多歲。該業務在 1 月份增長了 13.5% 左右。 3 月份，它增長了 7%。這就是產量下降。例如，如果我將其與安全進行對比，我們的安全業務在 3 月份的增長要比 1 月份強勁。

Now I honestly haven't given that -- I've been now at the show over the last few days. I don't know if there was a comp issue because some of the safety was being pushed around a little bit because of some COVID activity. But that's a case of -- that business has been -- it fell off a little bit in February. That, I know, was a comp issue with last year. But I don't believe January and March had a comp issue. I think that ties a bit into the strength we're seeing in our pending deployment.

老實說，我現在還沒有給出——過去幾天我一直在看演出。我不知道是否存在 comp 問題，因為某些 COVID 活動導致一些安全性有所降低。但這是一個例子 - 該業務一直 - 它在 2 月份有所下滑。我知道，那是去年的補償問題。但我不認為 1 月和 3 月有補償問題。我認為這與我們在未決部署中看到的實力有一定關係。

If I look at remaining products, that did also fall off a little bit, and there'll be some production in those as well, particularly in the metal working.

如果我看看剩餘的產品，那確實也有所下降，而且這些產品也會有一些生產，特別是在金屬加工方面。

Our next question comes from the line of David Manthey with Baird.

我們的下一個問題來自 David Manthey 與 Baird 的對話。

Dave, if you're talking, you are on mute.

戴夫，如果你在說話，那你就靜音了。

And moving on, our next question is from the line of Ken Newman of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

繼續前進，我們的下一個問題來自 KeyBanc Capital Markets 的 Ken Newman。

Holden, I'm curious if you could just talk a little bit more on the fastener sales trends in March. Obviously, a bigger sequential slowdown here and the comp for April looks pretty similar. I guess, two minor questions here. One, I guess, should we assume that the fastener volumes were negative in the month? And two, how do we think about the net margin impact of that part of the portfolio since I think it's typically accretive to mix, but you also called out lower shipping container costs?

霍爾頓，我很好奇你是否可以多談談 3 月份的緊固件銷售趨勢。顯然，這裡的環比放緩幅度更大，4 月份的情況看起來非常相似。我想，這裡有兩個小問題。第一，我想，我們是否應該假設當月緊固件銷量為負？第二，我們如何看待這部分投資組合的淨利潤率影響，因為我認為混合通常會增加，但你也呼籲降低集裝箱成本？

Yes. With regards to sort of the volume side versus the price side, the -- I'm trying to think.

是的。關於數量方面與價格方面的排序，我正在思考。

By line, it was slightly negative.

順便說一句，它略微消極。

It would be. It would be. So I think that that's an element. And again, it's our most cyclical line. Dan referenced sort of the commentary about the OEM fasteners in particular. I mean today, OEM fasteners represent about 62% of our fastener business. And so when you get a slowdown of some sort in a period, it's going to affect the volumes in the fastener side of the business.

這將是。這將是。所以我認為這是一個要素。同樣，這是我們最具週期性的產品線。 Dan 特別提到了一些關於 OEM 緊固件的評論。我的意思是，今天，OEM 緊固件約占我們緊固件業務的 62%。因此，當您在一段時間內出現某種形式的放緩時，它將影響業務緊固件方面的銷量。

Now you're right, it tends to be a higher margin line. And so to the degree that fasteners grow slower than the rest, that does have an adverse mix impact. I think that's always been the case, cycle to cycle. It's something we talk a lot about, about sort of mix impact.

現在你是對的，它往往是一個更高的保證金線。因此，如果緊固件的增長速度比其他緊固件慢，那確實會產生不利的混合影響。我認為情況一直如此，循環往復。這是我們經常談論的事情，關於某種混合影響。

When the falloff is in the OEM fastener component of the fasteners, the mix impact is different than if it's in the MRO piece. Could see the OEM fasteners do not have a higher gross margin than our overall company gross margin. The MRO fasteners do.

當衰減在緊固件的 OEM 緊固件組件中時，混合影響與在 MRO 部件中不同。可以看到 OEM 緊固件的毛利率並不高於我們公司的整體毛利率。 MRO 緊固件可以。

That's helpful color. Got it. And then I guess for my follow-up here, I'm curious if you -- I mean, last quarter, you talked maybe the need to renegotiate pricing with some of your big vendors because of steel prices as well as transportation costs. You've obviously -- you talked a little bit about transportation easing a bit, but I think the prices have also kind of stayed in here in recent months. I'm curious if you have any update on the color for price/cost negotiations on higher steel material?

這是有用的顏色。知道了。然後我想對於我在這裡的後續行動，我很好奇你是否 - 我的意思是，上個季度，你談到可能由於鋼鐵價格和運輸成本而需要與一些大供應商重新談判定價。你顯然 - 你談到了一些關於交通放鬆的問題，但我認為最近幾個月價格也一直保持在這裡。我很好奇您是否有關於更高鋼材價格/成本談判的顏色的最新消息？

We are acutely aware of steel pricing and shipping costs. And that's our covenant with our customer. We're going to find the best quality, best price, best reliability supply chain for their business. There are always robust conversations going on.

我們敏銳地意識到鋼鐵價格和運輸成本。這是我們與客戶的約定。我們將為他們的業務找到最好的質量、最好的價格、最好的可靠性供應鏈。總是有強有力的對話在進行。

But we also operate in a very dynamic marketplace. So we've been seeing fastener prices stabilize for a number of months now. We're seeing that come through in our cost of goods. And that also helps our gross margin in the short term because we're seeing -- we were getting squeezed a little bit 6 and 9 months ago. A little bit of that squeezing is lessening right now, and you're seeing that sign through in our numbers as well.

但我們也在一個非常動態的市場中運營。因此，幾個月來我們一直看到緊固件價格趨於穩定。我們在商品成本中看到了這一點。這也有助於我們在短期內提高毛利率，因為我們看到——我們在 6 個月和 9 個月前受到了一點擠壓。一點點擠壓現在正在減輕，你也在我們的數字中看到這個跡象。

And I think those conversations -- I think we've always talked about how our objective was to talk to those customers that have the timing of our costing and we understood, as Dan said, we have a covenant to sort of adjust as appropriate. I think our customers have been great working with us to understand when our product is going to be coming through at a lower cost, et cetera.

我認為那些談話——我認為我們一直在談論我們的目標是如何與那些有時間計算成本的客戶交談，我們理解，正如丹所說，我們有一個適當調整的契約。我認為我們的客戶與我們合作非常愉快，以了解我們的產品何時會以更低的成本等方式推出。

And so we've always kind of felt that as you get to that second quarter. There'll probably be more activity around that and adjustments to be made. I still think that that's probably the case that those are sort of second quarter, third quarter type activities. But again, what you should be getting a sense of is we're trying to time any decline that we may have to have in pricing to our customers with the declines that we see in costing.

因此，當您進入第二季度時，我們總是有種感覺。可能會有更多的活動圍繞這一點進行調整。我仍然認為這可能是第二季度、第三季度類型的活動。但同樣，您應該了解的是，我們正試圖通過我們在成本核算中看到的下降來計算我們可能不得不向客戶定價的任何下降。

And so I certainly understand the concern. But again, we -- I think we've done a good job sort of matching price and cost. I think that the team has done a great job on this side of the cycle as well. And the objective is to be price/cost neutral.

所以我當然理解這種擔憂。但同樣，我們——我認為我們在匹配價格和成本方面做得很好。我認為團隊在周期的這一方面也做得很好。目標是保持價格/成本中立。

Our next questions come from the line of David Manthey with Baird.

我們的下一個問題來自 David Manthey 與 Baird 的對話。

Yes. In relation to that -- to the prior answer, that's exactly what I wanted to have you discuss, just the general pricing methodology of how you're trying to match your customer pricing relative to the actual COGS in your supply chain versus front-running any price increase or I guess, lagging a price decline. And you addressed it to a large extent, but I just want to be clear on that. Your container prices are down, steel prices are up a little bit, and you're saying that fastener prices are mostly stable today. So you're not anticipating any major changes as we look at 2023 as we sit here today?

是的。與此相關 - 關於先前的答案，這正是我想讓您討論的內容，只是您嘗試將客戶定價與供應鏈中的實際銷貨成本與搶先交易相匹配的一般定價方法任何價格上漲，或者我猜，滯後於價格下跌。你在很大程度上解決了這個問題，但我只想澄清一下。你們的集裝箱價格下降了，鋼材價格上漲了一點，你們說今天緊固件價格基本穩定。因此，當我們今天坐在這裡展望 2023 年時，您預計不會有任何重大變化嗎？

As we sit here today, I would say no. We're not. Again, we -- that we might need to adjust pricing is not a surprise. We know where that would have to happen (inaudible). Again, we have pretty good visibility in our costing. And so we really do try to align those two things.

當我們今天坐在這裡時，我會說不。不是。同樣，我們 - 我們可能需要調整定價並不奇怪。我們知道必須在哪裡發生（聽不清）。同樣，我們在成本核算方面有很好的可見性。因此，我們確實確實嘗試使這兩件事保持一致。

And so as you know, we really didn't have a point through the period of inflation where our pricing was ahead of our costing, and that was deliberate. As you got towards the flip side of that cycle, we actually got a little bit behind from a price/cost standpoint just because as much pricing as we put through to respond to the marketplace, it just wasn't quite enough given how dramatic the sort of the cost side was.

因此，如您所知，在通貨膨脹期間，我們確實沒有意識到我們的定價領先於成本計算，這是故意的。當你走向那個週期的另一面時，我們實際上從價格/成本的角度來看有點落後，只是因為我們為響應市場而付出的定價，考慮到有多麼戲劇化，這還不夠某種程度上是成本方面。

And all is we're seeing -- so as we talked about 2 quarters ago, we started talking about 2 quarters ago, we wound up having negative price cost on the fastener side. And we anticipated at the time that costing would catch up to our pricing, and that's largely where we got to this quarter. But going forward, the idea is to -- and this is a conversation we've been very explicitly having with customers. There will be cases where we have to reduce the price based on the variables you talked about, but we should be able to largely track that with our costing.

我們所看到的一切——正如我們在 2 個季度前談論的那樣，我們在 2 個季度前開始談論，我們最終在緊固件方面的價格成本為負。我們當時預計成本核算會趕上我們的定價，這在很大程度上是我們本季度的情況。但展望未來，我們的想法是——這是我們一直非常明確地與客戶進行的對話。在某些情況下，我們必鬚根據您談到的變量降低價格，但我們應該能夠在很大程度上通過我們的成本核算來跟踪這一點。

If you break our business into three components, Dave, to Holden's point, on the fastener side, I think we've done a really nice job managing through it. Part of the lumpiness to it, it was -- some of the changes were pretty extreme.

如果你把我們的業務分成三個部分，Dave，就 Holden 的觀點而言，在緊固件方面，我認為我們在管理方面做得非常好。它的部分原因是——一些變化非常極端。

If I look at safety, we have great visibility to demand. Over half of that business is going through a vending device. So you really understand that business, and we've been able to manage through that quite well. We did adjust some pricing here in the -- as Holden touched on, during the quarter on our remaining product lines because there, we probably weren't -- we were putting so much attention on the half of our business that's fasteners and safety, and we were probably not as focused on the other half of the business as we should have been and we did some corrections there. So we did raise some prices on the non-fastener, non-safety piece during the quarter.

如果我看安全，我們對需求有很好的了解。超過一半的業務是通過自動售貨機進行的。所以你真的了解這項業務，我們已經能夠很好地管理它。我們確實在這裡調整了一些定價——正如 Holden 提到的那樣，在本季度我們剩餘的產品線，因為我們可能沒有——我們非常關注緊固件和安全業務的一半，我們可能沒有像我們應該的那樣專注於業務的另一半，我們在那裡做了一些修正。因此，我們在本季度確實提高了非緊固件、非安全件的價格。

Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research.

我們的下一個問題來自 Nigel Coe 與 Wolfe Research 的合作。

I know the freight is quite small portion of revenues, but you called out the growth of 14% or so. Obviously, very good margin. So just wondering, given where LTL tonnage is trending right now, how -- what did you do to kind of get that kind of growth rate? And it sounds like you expecting this to continue going forward. So just wondering what's driving that kind of growth?

我知道運費在收入中所佔比例很小，但你稱增長了 14% 左右。顯然，利潤率非常好。所以只是想知道，鑑於 LTL 噸位目前的趨勢，你如何 - 你做了什麼來獲得這種增長率？聽起來您希望這種情況繼續向前發展。所以只是想知道是什麼推動了這種增長？

I think sometimes you can be guilty of over time of -- you focus on -- there's enough energy in the room to focus on a handful of things. And sometimes things fall off that focus. I would say if anything, we were probably a little bit guilty of that in recent years on the freight side of the equation. And part of that, I'll attribute it to me from the standpoint of what are the things you talk about, what are the things you push focus on.

我認為有時候你會因為時間的推移而感到內疚——你專注於——房間裡有足夠的能量來專注於少數幾件事。有時事情會偏離那個焦點。我想說，如果有的話，我們近年來在等式的貨運方面可能有點內疚。其中一部分，我會從你談論的事情的角度歸因於我，你關注的事情是什麼。

And when things get really chaotic, sometimes you have to pivot and say, hey, folks, we need to put some energy into this because this is a we problem that we need to fix. And so it's more of a case of I'd say we're probably reverting to some of the freight pricing habits that we had 3 and 4 years ago that were maybe a little bit waning in the last several years. And COVID and all the other distractions of life came into play.

當事情變得非常混亂時，有時你必須轉而說，嘿，伙計們，我們需要為此投入一些精力，因為這是我們需要解決的問題。因此，我想說的是，我們可能正在恢復 3 年和 4 年前的一些運費定價習慣，這些習慣在過去幾年中可能會有所減弱。 COVID 和生活中的所有其他干擾開始發揮作用。

The other element to it is while we lost some focus on our ability to charge for freight, we have really good at using our own trucks from moving freight. So we have those two dynamics going on. We're probably back to where we should be on what we're charging out and we've improved on how much goes through our own network, and that's a nice one-two punch.

另一個因素是，雖然我們失去了對貨運收費能力的關注，但我們非常擅長使用自己的卡車運送貨物。所以我們有這兩種動力。我們可能回到了我們應該收費的地方，並且我們已經改進了通過我們自己的網絡的數量，這是一個很好的一擊二擊。

And I think there's -- I mean there's a number of things factoring in today, some of which are long-term sustainable and some of which are sort of in the here and now. But we've alluded a couple of times to an increase in plant spend. As more plant spend becomes a bigger portion of our business, it becomes easier for us to plan our own logistics, right?

而且我認為有 - 我的意思是今天有很多因素，其中一些是長期可持續的，其中一些是此時此地。但我們已經多次提到工廠支出的增加。隨著更多的工廠支出成為我們業務的更大一部分，我們更容易規劃自己的物流，對吧？

And so we have seen our third-party freight go down, in part because of that trend. I think that's going to continue. We did or at least are in the process of executing some route consolidation and some rescheduling of routes, which I think will bring some efficiencies into the business, not just the ongoing continuous improvement of the business that I think will be sustainable.

因此，我們看到我們的第三方運費下降，部分原因是這種趨勢。我認為這將繼續下去。我們已經或至少正在執行一些路線整合和一些路線重新安排，我認為這將為業務帶來一些效率，而不僅僅是我認為可持續的業務持續改進。

What you're referring to, though, is important because as our revenues have gone up as the [SME] focus there, the cost structure of our semis fleet is fairly stable. And so as revenues go up, we actually leveraged that fairly well.

不過，你所指的很重要，因為隨著我們的收入隨著 [SME] 的關注而增加，我們半成品車隊的成本結構相當穩定。因此，隨著收入的增加，我們實際上很好地利用了這一點。

The other piece in this quarter that occurred though is, one, container costs are down a lot. And that was a benefit. I think down something like 75% year-over-year. So that was a benefit. I would also point out that our container flow is down a lot this quarter because of the things we're doing to sort of unwind some inventory. And so our container flow in the first quarter was also down 50%.

不過，本季度發生的另一件事是，集裝箱成本大幅下降。這是一個好處。我認為同比下降了 75%。所以這是一個好處。我還要指出，本季度我們的集裝箱流量下降了很多，因為我們正在做一些事情來減少一些庫存。因此，我們第一季度的集裝箱流量也下降了 50%。

Now I think those latter two issues, they're not necessarily long-term issues, that's adjusting to sort of things that appeared in the last couple of years. I do think that they'll last for the next couple of quarters. But things like the plant spend, lower third-party freight, route consolidation, those sorts of things, I think those are going to continue to improve the business.

現在我認為後兩個問題，它們不一定是長期問題，而是針對過去幾年出現的一些事情進行調整。我確實認為它們會持續接下來的幾個季度。但是諸如工廠支出、降低第三方運費、航線整合之類的事情，我認為這些將繼續改善業務。

The big variable will be demand, right? Because our freight revenues aren't different than our other revenues. If activity levels begin to drop, then freight revenue dollars may come in and then that stable cost base could work against you. And so I think demand is an open question there. But from an execution standpoint, there's some great things going on with freight in the organization.

最大的變數是需求，對吧？因為我們的貨運收入與我們的其他收入沒有什麼不同。如果活動水平開始下降，那麼運費收入可能會增加，然後穩定的成本基礎可能會對您不利。所以我認為需求在那裡是一個懸而未決的問題。但從執行的角度來看，組織中的貨運有一些很棒的事情發生。

Yes. No, that's great. And then just a quick one. We talked about the March sales now at some length. But you called out weather impact in February. You didn't call out anything in March, but some companies are blaming weather in March. So I'm just wondering were there any weather impacts that could maybe explain some of the weakness you saw towards the back end of the month?

是的。不，那太好了。然後只是一個快速的。我們現在詳細討論了 3 月份的銷售情況。但是你在 2 月份提到了天氣影響。三月份你什麼都沒喊，但有些公司卻在三月份指責天氣。所以我只是想知道是否有任何天氣影響可以解釋你在月底看到的一些弱點？

No. We've tried to raise our threshold of pain that we bought at a mentioned. Can I find you an RVP that think there was some weather in January? Sure. Can I find just someone that thinks there was some in March? Yes. It doesn't rise to a threshold that's worth discussing. That was a true in February.

不，我們試圖提高我們在提到的時候購買的痛苦閾值。我能給你找一個認為 1 月份有天氣的 RVP 嗎？當然。我能找到一個認為三月份有的人嗎？是的。它沒有上升到值得討論的門檻。這在二月份是真實的。

Nigel, for what it's worth, as Holden was answering that first question, I did take a quick look. Our freight as a percentage of sales that we charged out in the first quarter of 2022 was identical to what it was in the first quarter of 2019. In the last 2 years, it had dropped off about 30 basis points.

奈傑爾，不管它值多少錢，當霍爾頓回答第一個問題時，我確實快速看了一眼。我們在 2022 年第一季度收取的運費佔銷售額的百分比與 2019 年第一季度相同。在過去兩年中，它下降了約 30 個基點。

Our next question comes from the line of Pat Baumann with JPMorgan.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根大通的 Pat Baumann。

Just a quick one on pricing first. I think there was a wide range on expectations, at least, as I understood it for your pricing coming into this year. Maybe you were thinking it could be down 1 point or 2 or up 1 point or 2, depending on how things played out. I guess I'm just curious, after the first quarter, and your actions in February and what you just said on kind of fasteners with regard to the input cost on that, what your expectations are now for this year on pricing?

先簡單介紹一下定價。我認為至少根據我對今年你們定價的理解，人們的期望範圍很廣。也許你在想它可能會下跌 1 點或 2 點或上漲 1 點或 2 點，這取決於事情的發展。我想我只是很好奇，在第一季度之後，以及您在 2 月份的行動以及您剛才所說的關於輸入成本的緊固件，您現在對今年定價的期望是什麼？

And then as a corollary to that, just thinking about your February pricing actions in the non-fastener, non-safety portion of sales. Do you think that had anything to do with kind of the volume slowdown you saw there for the month of March?

然後作為其必然結果，只需考慮您 2 月份在非緊固件、非安全銷售部分的定價行為。您認為這與您在 3 月份看到的交易量放緩有什麼關係嗎？

I'll touch on the last part of your question, then I'll let Holden handle the meat of it. But on that last part, if you think about what happened and what we're just running through on those OEM fastener numbers, the drop-off from January to February was linked to production business. Our OEM fasteners dropped in half as far as the -- relative -- from 13.5% to 7% growth. And so that -- there was no pricing action there. And if you look at the remaining product lines, the drop-off actually occurred 30 days after. So I mean, it was really about the production aspect of our business, not so much the other parts of our business.

我會談談你問題的最後一部分，然後我會讓 Holden 處理它的實質。但在最後一部分，如果您考慮發生的事情以及我們剛剛在這些 OEM 緊固件數量上所經歷的事情，那麼 1 月至 2 月的下降與生產業務有關。我們的 OEM 緊固件從 13.5% 到 7% 的增長率下降了一半。因此 - 那裡沒有定價行動。如果你看看其餘的產品線，下降實際上發生在 30 天后。所以我的意思是，這實際上是關於我們業務的生產方面，而不是我們業務的其他部分。

Yes, I would agree with that. The -- plus frankly, those price increases went in sort of late in the quarter. And so I'm not sure that you would have seen a response like -- that you're alluding to in such a tight window. But that said, we're not really expecting that that's going to be adverse those lines from a gross standpoint. The -- yes. So we just -- we didn't see that. I wouldn't expect to see that.

是的，我同意這一點。坦率地說，這些價格上漲是在本季度末進行的。因此，我不確定您是否會看到像您在如此緊迫的窗口中提到的那樣的回應。但話雖如此，從總體角度來看，我們並不是真的期望這會對這些線路產生不利影響。的 - 是的。所以我們只是 - 我們沒有看到。我不希望看到那個。

As it relates to the overall pricing, remember, the wide range I've given is because ultimately, we don't have a great deal of visibility as it relates to how much pricing are we going to have to give away to customers because of contracts and things of that nature, right? And so my comment, I think, was if demand softens and there's a lot of pressure to sort of adjust price based on contracts, et cetera, then maybe our pricing is down 1 percentage point. If that doesn't occur because it hasn't to this point, maybe it's up a percentage point. And that was -- that's sort of the wild card from a pricing standpoint that sort of exists out there.

由於它與整體定價有關，請記住，我給出的廣泛範圍是因為最終，我們沒有太多的可見性，因為它與我們將不得不向客戶贈送多少定價有關，因為合同之類的，對吧？所以我的評論是，我認為，如果需求疲軟並且存在很大的壓力來根據合同等調整價格，那麼我們的定價可能會下降 1 個百分點。如果由於尚未達到這一點而沒有發生，則可能會上升一個百分點。那就是 - 從那裡存在的定價角度來看，這是一種外卡。

Again, unrelated to price/cost, which regardless, we think will be neutral, but that's why there's a wider range. And I think that that's still the case. And we talked a little bit in an earlier question about, I suspect is yet in 2Q and 3Q we'll be adjusting some pricing.

同樣，與價格/成本無關，無論如何，我們認為這將是中性的，但這就是范圍更廣的原因。我認為情況仍然如此。我們在之前的一個問題中談到了一點，我懷疑我們將在第二季度和第三季度調整一些定價。

I will say, however, that I've spoken some people before about how I think pricing comes into that 0% to 2% range probably in the lower half of it if nothing changes. But we have made some changes to our pricing in that other products area. And so what I would tell you is if we never had to adjust fastener pricing, I suspect that our pricing this year will be in the upper half of that 0% to 2% range.

但是，我要說的是，我之前已經和一些人談過我認為定價如何進入 0% 到 2% 的範圍，如果沒有任何變化，可能會在它的下半部分。但是我們對其他產品領域的定價進行了一些更改。所以我要告訴你的是，如果我們永遠不必調整緊固件定價，我懷疑我們今年的定價將在 0% 到 2% 範圍的上半部分。

But now the wildcard becomes what do we have to do with fastener pricing? If we give a bunch of that back in 2Q and 3Q, then that upper half of the range comes down. And that's the -- we just don't know the order of magnitude of impacted that yet. I hope that wasn't confusing.

但現在通配符變成了我們與緊固件定價有什麼關係？如果我們在 2Q 和 3Q 中給出一堆，那麼範圍的上半部分就會下降。那就是 - 我們只是不知道受影響的數量級。我希望這不會造成混淆。

No, no, that's helpful color. Maybe my follow-up would be around gross margin then for this year. I think you were expecting maybe 50 to 100 basis points of contraction when we talked in January. It sounds like maybe pricing could be tracking a bit better. Price/cost may be neutral, I don't know. And the freight commentary was also -- sounded better. So wondering if you're thinking any differently about that framework now.

不，不，那是有用的顏色。也許我的後續行動將是今年的毛利率。我想當我們在 1 月份談話時，你預計可能會收縮 50 到 100 個基點。聽起來定價可能會更好一些。價格/成本可能是中性的，我不知道。貨運評論也 - 聽起來更好。所以想知道您現在是否對該框架有任何不同的看法。

Yes. So again, price/cost -- most of the variables that were impacting gross margin didn't surprise us, right? The degree that mix is impacting -- again, when you think about how the quarter progressed, that didn't surprise. If I think about the price/cost elements of it, that's playing out largely as we expected when we talked about it last quarter.

是的。那麼，價格/成本——影響毛利率的大多數變量並沒有讓我們感到驚訝，對吧？混合的程度正在產生影響——同樣，當您考慮本季度的進展情況時，這並不令人驚訝。如果我考慮它的價格/成本因素，那在很大程度上正如我們在上個季度討論它時所預期的那樣發揮作用。

Really, the only variable that was a surprise was that freight piece. We simply executed fairly well. And again, I do believe that most of the variables that benefited freight, I believe that those variables are going to be in place in 2Q and 3Q. So freight may have increased my expectations around gross margin for the full year, but that's really the one variable that played out differently than I expected it to from last year -- from last quarter's conversations.

真的，唯一令人驚訝的變量是貨運件。我們只是執行得相當好。再一次，我確實相信大多數有利於貨運的變量，我相信這些變量將在第二季度和第三季度出現。因此，運費可能提高了我對全年毛利率的預期，但這確實是一個與我去年預期不同的變量——從上個季度的談話中。

Okay. That's helpful. I'll squeeze in one more in, I will.

好的。這很有幫助。我再擠一個進去，我會的。

Do we have two?

我們有兩個嗎？

Yes. No, that's great. Appreciate it.

是的。不，那太好了。欣賞它。

Our next question comes from the line of Jacob Levinson with Melius Research.

我們的下一個問題來自 Jacob Levinson 與 Melius Research 的合作。

I just -- I realize it's still very early days here, but just curious if you've heard anything coming out of the field in terms of the impact of credit stresses on either customers or some of your smaller competitors?

我只是 - 我意識到這裡還處於早期階段，但只是想知道您是否聽說過有關信貸壓力對客戶或您的一些較小競爭對手的影響的任何消息？

No, no. We actually reduced -- our bad debt expense was actually a benefit to our margin this quarter. We were just not seeing a significant -- we're not seeing anything in our business regarding that.

不，不。我們實際上減少了 - 我們的壞賬費用實際上是本季度我們利潤率的一個好處。我們只是沒有看到重要的——我們在我們的業務中沒有看到任何與此相關的事情。

Okay. That makes sense. And then just quickly, a second one. I can see that you're still planning on spending that $200 million-ish capital spending this year despite the fact that the growth has come down a little bit. I mean is that partly just a function of the fact that you haven't been able to get some things done over the last few years with all the volatility around COVID? Or is it really just a function of the fact that, obviously, 10% growth in the quarter is not exactly a recession?

好的。這就說得通了。然後很快，第二個。我可以看到，儘管增長有所下降，但您今年仍計劃支出 2 億美元左右的資本支出。我的意思是，這在一定程度上是因為過去幾年裡，由於 COVID 的所有波動，你無法完成一些事情嗎？或者它真的只是一個事實的函數，即本季度 10% 的增長顯然不完全是衰退？

Well, a, that's a piece. The other thing is we're always adding infrastructure for what we need long term. So if you think about what's going on right now, we're expanding our distribution facility in Denton, Texas and on the other side of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We are building a distribution facility in the Salt Lake market. And so we're adding capacity because we've all grown the capacity we have.

好吧，那是一塊。另一件事是我們一直在為我們長期需要的東西添加基礎設施。所以如果你想想現在發生了什麼，我們正在擴大我們在德克薩斯州登頓和達拉斯-沃斯堡地區另一邊的分銷設施。我們正在鹽湖城市場建設配送設施。所以我們正在增加容量，因為我們都增加了我們擁有的容量。

If you think about our FMI, that's quite strong right now, and that's a capital item that we're adding. And then the last piece would be, if I think of where we've probably struggled the most in recent years to add would be on the vehicle side because stuff just wasn't available. You couldn't get -- we couldn't get our Dodge Ram pickups in the way we wanted to. We couldn't get our semis the way we wanted to. That is loosening up now. And so some of the CapEx is going into the transportation side.

如果你考慮我們的 FMI，那現在非常強大，這是我們正在添加的資本項目。然後最後一點是，如果我想到近年來我們可能最努力添加的地方是車輛方面，因為東西不可用。你無法獲得 - 我們無法以我們想要的方式獲得我們的道奇公羊皮卡。我們無法按照我們想要的方式獲得半決賽。現在正在放鬆。因此，一些資本支出將用於運輸方面。

Recently, I was visiting one of our Onsite locations. And I'm pleased to say that I received a picture here, 1.5 weeks ago, a bunch of Fastenal trailers being produced that are coming down the production line. And so those kinds of things, we're able to get better today than we could have 6 and 12 months ago.

最近，我正在訪問我們的一個現場地點。我很高興地說，我在 1.5 週前在這裡收到了一張照片，一堆正在生產的 Fastenal 拖車正從生產線上下來。所以這些事情，我們今天能夠比 6 個月和 12 個月前做得更好。

Our next questions come from the line of Tommy Moll with Stephens.

我們的下一個問題來自 Tommy Moll 與 Stephens 的對話。

I wanted to start off on OpEx. If I'm doing my math right, in the first quarter, employee-related expenses grew at less than half the rate of sales, which is great to see. I suspect you may walk us back from assuming that recurs here in the second quarter or the rest of the year. So to the extent you can frame what you would anticipate for the second quarter, that would be helpful. And just any qualitative commentary for the year would be as well.

我想從 OpEx 開始。如果我沒記錯的話，在第一季度，與員工相關的費用增長率不到銷售額增長率的一半，這很值得一看。我懷疑你可能會讓我們放棄假設這種情況會在第二季度或今年餘下時間再次發生。因此，在某種程度上，您可以構建您對第二季度的預期，這將有所幫助。這一年的任何定性評論也是如此。

Yes. I don't know that I'm necessarily going to walk you back. I think it's important to understand the source, right? I mean the reason why we were able to leverage the way we did was because we're just not growing as quickly this year as we grew last year. And so again, I wanted to emphasize that I think we had a healthy payout of incentive pay of the business in this quarter. It wasn't as healthy as last year. And that's not a surprise.

是的。我不知道我一定會送你回去。我認為了解來源很重要，對吧？我的意思是我們之所以能夠利用我們所做的方式，是因為我們今年的增長速度不如去年。因此，我想再次強調，我認為本季度我們的企業激勵薪酬支出是健康的。它不像去年那麼健康。這並不奇怪。

But if I think about how the rest of the year plays out, we still have some pretty large numbers that we're going to lap in the second quarter and the third quarter as well. And so I do expect that we'll have healthy incentive payouts in the second quarter and third quarter. We'll see how the market plays out, but based on sort of how we grew in the most recent quarter, but I do believe that they will be lower than what we experienced last year.

但如果我考慮今年剩餘時間的表現，我們仍然有一些相當大的數字，我們將在第二季度和第三季度完成。所以我確實希望我們在第二季度和第三季度會有健康的激勵支出。我們將看到市場如何發展，但基於我們在最近一個季度的增長情況，但我相信它們會低於我們去年的水平。

And so I think that we're going to have, for most of the year, that element of lower incentive pay year-over-year that helps us in leveraging the sort of the payroll-related expense.

因此，我認為，在今年的大部分時間裡，我們將擁有同比較低的激勵薪酬，這有助於我們利用與工資相關的費用。

A good chunk of our incentive comp -- and we cover this in pretty good detail, I believe, in our proxy. But a good chunk of our incentive comp is tied directly to pretax earnings growth. So if you think what was going on last year, Q1, 2 and 3 had a meaningful expansion of that incentive growth. Actually, Q2 was the highest of the three, but I believe it was about $0.5 million higher in Q2 versus Q1. So just nominally higher and then drops off in Q4.

我們激勵補償的很大一部分——我相信，我們在代理中非常詳細地介紹了這一點。但我們的激勵薪酬中有很大一部分與稅前收益增長直接相關。因此，如果你想想去年發生的事情，第一季度、第二季度和第三季度的激勵增長有了有意義的擴張。實際上，第二季度是三者中最高的，但我認為第二季度比第一季度高出約 50 萬美元。所以只是名義上更高，然後在第四季度下降。

So depending on what's happening with our earnings growth relative to what was happening in the same quarter of the prior year, that gives us a bit of a buffer here in the first quarter and presumably in the second and third, unless the economy surprises us and it turns more positive, and that would be a great problem to have.

因此，取決於我們的收入增長相對於去年同期發生的情況，這給我們在第一季度以及第二和第三季度提供了一些緩衝，除非經濟讓我們感到意外和它變得更加積極，這將是一個很大的問題。

I appreciate the insight and wanted to shift for my second question to a higher level strategic question. The framing you provided on the structural improvements in terms of leverage and asset intensity versus the prepandemic base was very helpful. And so there's clearly some progress on both of those initiatives. If you think about 2023, what are some of the key focus areas, the work that's still ahead of you for this year? Are there any that you would draw our attention to that you're really focused on driving through the organization at this point?

我很欣賞這種見解，並希望將我的第二個問題轉移到更高層次的戰略問題。您提供的關於槓桿和資產強度方面的結構性改進與大流行前基礎相比的框架非常有幫助。因此，這兩項舉措顯然都取得了一些進展。如果您考慮到 2023 年，有哪些重點關注領域，以及今年您仍需完成的工作？您是否會提請我們注意您目前真正專注於推動整個組織？

Well, yes, if you think of the growth drivers come to mind first. That's not what your question is. But for me, growth drivers come to mine first of the structural changes we're making as far as customer acquisition both in the standpoint of physically what channel is going through brands versus Onsite, and then what tool are we using within the respective channel, FMI, et cetera, to serve at a really high level in a very efficient level, our customer.

嗯，是的，如果你首先想到增長動力。那不是你的問題。但對我來說，增長驅動因素首先是我們在客戶獲取方面所做的結構性變化，無論是從物理上通過品牌還是現場的渠道，然後是我們在各自渠道中使用的工具， FMI 等，以非常高效的水平為我們的客戶提供真正高水平的服務。

If I think about things that impact our cash flow, we often talk about our covenant with our customer includes a number of things. One, finding great quality of product, great availability of product, reliability of product and great price. One of those elements, the availability, we had to take a tremendous amount of working capital inventory onto our balance sheet over the last 6 to 18 months as things were chaotic, could be late and actually go back several years because we took on a lot of safety products back in 2020, but that piece had been worked through.

如果我考慮影響我們現金流的事情，我們經常談論我們與客戶的契約包括很多事情。第一，找到優質的產品、良好的產品可用性、產品的可靠性和優惠的價格。其中一個因素是可用性，在過去的 6 到 18 個月裡，我們不得不將大量的營運資金庫存存入我們的資產負債表，因為事情很混亂，可能會遲到，實際上可以追溯到幾年前，因為我們承擔了很多回到 2020 年的安全產品，但那部分已經完成。

So when I think of this year, I envision a very, very strong cash flow year, as we saw in the first quarter because we can take not days, but weeks out of our inventory on hand. We're managing our accounts receivable relationships at a really strong level. It's basically a better CFO today than we did 10 years ago. And things like that help.

因此，當我想到今年時，我設想了一個非常非常強勁的現金流年，正如我們在第一季度所看到的那樣，因為我們不能花幾天時間，而是花幾週時間來處理手頭的庫存。我們正在以非常強大的水平管理我們的應收賬款關係。它基本上是今天比我們 10 年前更好的 CFO。諸如此類的事情會有所幫助。

But you put those things together, we've talked internally about what we call our Drive to 35%. And what that is, if you look at our internal financial statements, and these would sign through externally, 2 of the 3 would, we look at our accounts receivable business unit by business unit. We look at fully loaded inventory, that's local inventory as well as the allocation of distribution inventory. Then we look at our local vehicles. We look at those three assets, and we say an optimal place for us in $175,000 a month branch, a $200,000 a month branch is above 35%, that number, 35% of the annual sales.

但是你把這些東西放在一起，我們已經在內部討論了我們稱之為 Drive to 35% 的事情。也就是說，如果你看一下我們的內部財務報表，這些財務報表會通過外部簽署，3 個中有 2 個會按業務部門查看我們的應收賬款業務部門。我們查看滿載庫存，即本地庫存以及分銷庫存的分配。然後我們看看我們當地的車輛。我們看看這三項資產，我們說在每月 175,000 美元的分支機構中對我們來說是最佳位置，每月 200,000 美元的分支機構超過 35%，這個數字，年銷售額的 35%。

And we haven't been able to drive towards that in the last few years because of COVID, because of inflation, because of supply chain disruption. We're going to continue moving in down towards that path. I don't know if Holden believes we can get to 35%. He's probably a 37% guy, but I believe we can get to 35%. If international allows us to make Holden more right or me more, right? And it's -- if we're growing really well, I'm cool with the either number.

由於 COVID，由於通貨膨脹，由於供應鏈中斷，我們在過去幾年中一直無法實現這一目標。我們將繼續朝著這條道路前進。我不知道 Holden 是否相信我們可以達到 35%。他可能是一個 37% 的人，但我相信我們可以達到 35%。如果國際允許我們讓 Holden 更正確或讓我更正確，對嗎？而且——如果我們發展得很好，我對這兩個數字都很滿意。

But what puts us in a position to really rationalize the inventory because when you're -- conceptually, when you're pulling inventory through a supply chain network, and you have great visibility of -- 65% of our revenue is in this FMI footprint. We have great visibility to need. And you can manage that -- setting aside the disruptions like you saw last year with, hey, it's taken an extra 30 days to get it through -- across the ocean and through the ports and you need to allow for that. Setting that kind of stuff aside, it's an inherently more efficient model and -- both from a working capital standpoint and from a human capital standpoint.

但是，是什麼讓我們能夠真正使庫存合理化，因為當你——從概念上講，當你通過供應鍊網絡提取庫存時，並且你有很好的可見性——我們 65% 的收入都在這個 FMI 中腳印。我們對需求有很好的了解。你可以管理它——拋開你去年看到的中斷，嘿，它需要額外的 30 天才能通過——跨越海洋和港口，你需要考慮到這一點。撇開這類問題不談，它本質上是一種更高效的模式——無論是從營運資本的角度還是從人力資本的角度來看。

And you've seen that shine through in both our cash flow this quarter. You're seeing it shine through in our operating expenses, particularly the questions here about components of our people cost.

你已經在本季度的現金流中看到了這一點。你看到它在我們的運營費用中大放異彩，尤其是這里關於我們人員成本組成部分的問題。

And probably, the only thing I'll add to that is, I mean, if you talk to our sales EVPs. A lot of the things that you're seeing happen, it's us taking advantage of things we've already installed, right? Taking advantage of the changes to sort of the branches, taking advantage of the digital footprint, taking advantage of lift, new role, specialization, all those things. We put those in place, but we haven't necessarily maximized the benefit to our business yet. And I think that our sales EVPs believe that we'll be more efficient 2, 3 years from now than we are today, that there's still plenty of room to run on that.

也許，我要補充的唯一一件事是，我的意思是，如果你與我們的銷售執行副總裁交談。您看到的很多事情都在發生，這是我們在利用我們已經安裝的東西，對吧？利用分支機構分類的變化，利用數字足跡，利用電梯、新角色、專業化，所有這些。我們已將這些落實到位，但我們還未必最大限度地為我們的業務帶來利益。而且我認為我們的銷售執行副總裁相信我們在 2、3 年後會比現在更有效率，在這方面仍有很大的提升空間。

I would say as well, from an inventory standpoint, again, we're doing a lot of things to improve velocity in our system and things of that nature. But we still have a lot of import inventory that we can work off. When we think about how far in the future we had to think about our purchasing behavior during the pandemic when constraints were there, we probably doubled our window for ordering. Right now, if we went from 4 months to 8 months or probably back down to 7 months, there's still more room to go to get closer to where we were prepandemic. I don't know that we'll get all the way there. Our fulfillment rates are higher. But there's still a lot more room to go.

我還要說，從庫存的角度來看，我們正在做很多事情來提高我們系統和那種性質的東西的速度。但我們仍有大量進口庫存可以處理。當我們考慮在未來多遠的情況下，當存在限制時，我們必須考慮我們在大流行期間的購買行為，我們可能會加倍訂購窗口。現在，如果我們從 4 個月縮短到 8 個月，或者可能回到 7 個月，還有更多的空間可以接近大流行前的狀態。我不知道我們會一路走到那裡。我們的履行率更高。但還有更多的空間去。

And so again, we've become -- our comments about where we are as a business was intended to say we've arrived. It was to make the point that we've progressed down a road nicely, but that road still has room to run.

因此，我們再次成為 - 我們關於我們作為一家企業所處位置的評論旨在說明我們已經到達。這是為了表明我們已經在一條道路上取得了很好的進展，但這條道路仍有運行的空間。

I think we have time for one more question. If there's one left. I see it's 4 minutes to the hour, and we like to finished properly. Just one more question, we'll take it, otherwise we'll wrap up.

我想我們還有時間再問一個問題。如果還剩一個。我看到現在是 4 分鐘到一個小時，我們希望正確完成。還有一個問題，我們會接受它，否則我們會結束。

Sure. Sure. The next questions come from the line of Chris Snyder with UBS.

當然。當然。接下來的問題來自瑞銀集團的 Chris Snyder。

I guess maybe for the one question. Specifically, we're looking for more color on the back half March softness. It sounds like the month ended softer than it started. Any end markets or product lines that saw a negative rate of change throughout the month? Because the ones you guys kind of called out was retail customers, international, construction kind of stuff that's been weak for the last 3 quarters. So did those just get weaker? Or did you see anything else kind of weaken as the month went on?

我想也許是為了一個問題。具體來說，我們正在尋找三月後半段柔軟度的更多顏色。聽起來這個月結束時比開始時要溫和。任何終端市場或產品線在整個月內出現負變化率？因為你們提到的是零售客戶、國際客戶、建築類客戶，這些客戶在過去 3 個季度表現不佳。那麼那些只是變弱了嗎？或者隨著月份的推移，您是否看到其他任何東西減弱了？

We don't have great visibility into specific end markets for the most part. What I would tell you is...

在大多數情況下，我們對特定的終端市場沒有很好的了解。我要告訴你的是...

Within a month.

一個月內。

Yes, within a month. And certainly, within manufacturing, it can be a little bit tricky within that particular bucket. But the -- what I'll tell you is outside of our Taxane region, which was still fairly positive on overall demand...

是的，一個月之內。當然，在製造業中，在特定範圍內可能會有點棘手。但是——我要告訴你的是在我們紫杉烷地區之外，這對整體需求來說仍然相當積極……

That's Texas and Louisiana (inaudible).

那是德克薩斯州和路易斯安那州（聽不清）。

Yes, very oil and gas oriented, still a really good outlook there. And so I think that market is doing well. Frankly, the vast majority of our other regions all had some variation of things softened in March. And just tell you it was pretty broad through the manufacturing space, not specific to any one market or what have you.

是的，非常以石油和天然氣為導向，那裡的前景仍然非常好。所以我認為市場表現良好。坦率地說，我們絕大多數其他地區在 3 月份都出現了一些變化。只是告訴你，它在製造領域非常廣泛，並不特定於任何一個市場或你擁有的市場。

I'll add a little piece. And this isn't (inaudible), this is an observation. So I had a lot of discussions with global operations -- entities, customers of ours or potential customers of ours over the last 2 days. And there was tremendous intersecting event. It's quite a few people that said, part of the reason we're here is we want to learn what you're doing from a technology standpoint to help our business.

我加一點。這不是（聽不清），這是一個觀察結果。因此，在過去的兩天裡，我與全球運營部門——實體、我們的客戶或我們的潛在客戶進行了很多討論。並且有巨大的交叉事件。很多人說，我們來這裡的部分原因是我們想從技術角度了解您正在做的事情以幫助我們的業務。

And one of the advantages when there's a breather, when there's less noise and less things you're worrying about, all of a sudden, the things you haven't done for the last 12 or 24 or 36 months because the world kept repeating itself of trying to end. The -- I think that's positive for our ability to take market share.

喘口氣的好處之一，當你擔心的事情少了，噪音少了，突然之間，你在過去的 12 或 24 或 36 個月裡沒有做過的事情，因為世界一直在重複自己試圖結束。 - 我認為這對我們佔據市場份額的能力是積極的。

And even if the business itself, the customer -- if you look at our -- and we talk about our top 100 customers, if you dial that in a little bit, and you start looking at our top 10, that's what really hurt us is our top 10 customers were -- and contracting from where they were 6 months ago. And that's economic. But our top -- if you look at customers 10 through 50, they were growing. If you look at customers 50 through 100, they were growing nicely because we're picking up market share. And that makes me more enthused. Because long term, our success is from taking market share every day. The economy is going to do in the short term what the economy is going to do.

即使業務本身，客戶——如果你看看我們的——我們談論我們的前 100 名客戶，如果你稍微撥一下，然後你開始看我們的前 10 名，那才是真正傷害我們的是我們的前 10 大客戶——並且從他們 6 個月前的位置開始收縮。這很經濟。但我們的最高層——如果你看看 10 到 50 歲的客戶，他們正在成長。如果你看看第 50 到 100 位客戶，他們增長得很好，因為我們正在獲得市場份額。這讓我更加熱情。因為從長遠來看，我們的成功來自於每天都在搶占市場份額。經濟將在短期內做經濟將要做的事情。

We have a healthy business. We generate more cash flow in a year like this. We'd rather be deploying the cash flow into the business. But in the year like this, maybe we'll return a little bit more to shareholders. But it's a case of focusing on the long-term opportunity of the business, and I'm as excited as ever.

我們有一個健康的業務。我們在這樣的一年裡產生了更多的現金流。我們寧願將現金流部署到業務中。但在這樣的一年裡，也許我們會更多地回報股東。但這是一個關注企業長期機會的案例，我一如既往地興奮。

With that, it's on the hour. Thanks for your interest in Fastenal today. Everybody, have a great April. Thanks, everyone.

就這樣，時間到了。感謝您今天對 Fastenal 的關注。大家，祝四月愉快。感謝大家。

This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

今天的會議到此結束。此時您可以斷開線路。感謝您的參與。