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.

大家好。歡迎參加 Fastenal 2023 年第一季財報電話會議。 （操作說明）請注意，本次會議正在錄音。現在，我將會議交給 Fastenal 公司的 Taylor Ranta。 Taylor，您可以開始了。

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.

歡迎參加 Fastenal 公司 2023 年第一季財報電話會議。本次會議將由公司總裁兼執行長 Dan Florness 和財務長 Holden Lewis 主持。會議時長約為 1 小時，首先將概述公司早期業績和營運情況，剩餘時間將用於問答環節。

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.

今天的電話會議內容為Fastenal專有訊息，並由Fastenal進行錄音。未經Fastenal同意，禁止本次電話會議進行任何錄音、複製、傳輸或散佈。本次電話會議將透過Fastenal投資者關係網站investor.fastenal.com進行網路直播。網路直播回放將在網站上保留至美國中部時間2023年6月1日午夜。

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.

再次提醒，今天的電話會議可能包含有關公司未來計劃和前景的聲明。這些聲明是基於我們目前的預期，我們不承擔更新這些聲明的義務。需要注意的是，公司的實際業績可能與預期業績有重大差異。可能導致實際業績與預期業績有差異的因素已列於本公司最新的獲利報告和定期向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中，我們建議您仔細閱讀這些因素。

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

現在我將把電話交給丹‧弗洛內斯先生。

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，歡迎參加Fastenal第一季財報電話會議。今天我和霍爾頓的電話會議有點特別，因為我們現在就在昨天剛結束的客戶博覽會現場。我們對這次活動非常滿意，客戶參與度很高。今年活動的一大亮點是，一些自然而然發生的事情得以實現。顯然，兩三年前，由於新冠疫情，我們沒能舉辦活動。去年我們舉辦了活動，但由於國際旅行的限制，我們不得不限制參與人數。而今年，我們沒有這些限制，所以活動非常成功。

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.

今年的活動主題聚焦於四大領域。首先是持續加速客戶的數位轉型，幫助他們更了解自身內部營運狀況。其次是切實保障供應鏈安全。過去幾年，全球供應鏈經歷了許多變革和衝擊，我們希望幫助客戶以更具策略性的視角，持續思考並應對未來的挑戰。

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.

第三點是能力和生產力。數位轉型很大程度上取決於對供應鏈要素的理解。它也關乎提升生產力——無論是生產車間還是營運的某個環節，我們都能提供相應的工具來實現這一目標。第四點是了解客戶的目標，並與他們分享我們如何在ESG（環境、社會和治理）轉型過程中協助他們實現目標。我認為這四點在整個活動中引起了廣泛共鳴。

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.

現在來看季度業績。第一季度，我們的每股盈餘為0.52美元，年成長10.5%。團隊在本季度實現了非常有效的費用控制，儘管如您在月度數據中所見，3月份的日銷售額略有下滑，但我們仍然對所取得的利潤增長感到滿意。目前，我們的ISM（庫存週轉率）已連續五個月低於50%，3月的ISM也出現了小幅下降。我們在業務中，尤其是在緊固件業務和OEM業務方面，都看到了這種趨勢。儘管如此，我們對團隊應對挑戰的能力印象深刻。

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.

正如我們前幾年討論過的，如果我們在比較疫情前後的情況，就會發現我們在業務管理方面做得非常出色。抱歉背景裡有嗶嗶聲，我的筆記型電腦在這裡——但如果你看一下營運成本佔銷售額的百分比，2019 年第一季度，營運成本佔銷售額的 27.8%。而到了 2023 年第一季，這一比例降至 24.6%。這主要歸功於我們對組織架構所做的所有調整。首先，我們現在的平均分支機構規模比 2019 年更大。其次，我們更多的業務來自現場服務。我們在業務數位化方面也做得非常出色，提高了效率，這一點顯而易見。

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.

另一方面，隨著我們對與客戶互動及其需求的了解不斷加深，以及全球供應鏈的改善，我們不僅能夠降低庫存週轉天數，而且在六個月前，也就是疫情爆發前，我們還能夠減少庫存週轉天數。在此期間，我們從網路中減少了大約三週的庫存，我們對團隊在這方面的能力感到非常滿意。

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，如果你經營得當，有效控制支出和營運資金（尤其是分銷業務），這些都會體現在現金流上。我們的經營現金流為3.89億美元，佔收益的132%，比去年同期成長了70%。也就是說，我們本季新增了約1.6億美元的營運現金流。我們的資本支出（淨資本支出）在兩個時期都非常接近。因此，我們擁有非常強大的自由現金流，這使我們能夠投資於業務發展或向股東返還收益。我們延續了這一勢頭，並在第一季派發了可觀的股息。昨晚，我們剛剛宣布了第二季度股息，目前我們正以每季約2億美元的形式派發股息。

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.

翻到[註腳]簿的第四頁。本季度，我們在Onsite業務方面新增了89家門市。活躍門市總數達到1,674家，比去年第一季成長了約16%。如果忽略從分店轉移過來的Onsite門市銷售，我們的Onsite業務較上季成長約20%，表現強勁。我們仍然堅定地朝著今年新增375至400家Onsite門市的目標邁進。第一季的新增門市數量略有下降，其中大部分集中在三月。但是，考慮到過去幾天在本次活動中的積極互動，我對未來六個月的發展前景充滿信心。

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.

就FMI技術而言，球隊本季表現非常出色。我們之前討論過建立基礎設施以支援每天100筆簽約的目標。在新冠疫情期間，隨著我們逐步實現每天100筆簽約的目標，我們的簽約量從70多筆到80多筆不等，一度跌至60多筆。現在，我們正在緩慢回升。去年第一季度，我們每天簽約83筆。今年第一季度，我們每天簽約92筆。 3月份，我們每天簽約99筆。所以，團隊的表現非常強勁。而且，您可以看到我們的平台還在持續擴張。本季我們的FMI為39.4%。 3月份，我們首次突破了40%。我們對此感到非常滿意，並且對全年簽約量達到23,000到25,000筆的目標充滿信心。

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.

正如我們前幾季所見，電子商務持續保持強勁成長。回想一下，去年秋季，電子商務營收首次突破20%。我相信本季度，這一比例約為22%。最後，綜合所有數據，我們的數位化銷售額佔比已達54%，去年同期為47%。在5月份——抱歉，應該是3月——我們達到了55%。我們的目標是在今年稍後將這一比例提升至65%。時間會證明我們能否實現這一長期目標——我們相信，最終實現85%的業務都透過某種形式的數位化管道進行。

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

這樣，我就把麥克風交給霍爾頓了。

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.

太好了，謝謝你，丹。在第五張投影片詳細討論本季業績之前，我想在丹之前準備好的發言稿的基礎上，再補充一些內容，以便更好地了解我們公司的整體狀況。

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年疫情爆發的同時，Fastenal加快了技術部署，並調整了銷售工作的結構和重點。這些舉措對短期銷售產生了不利影響，但我們持續擴大現場服務和FMI業務規模，並持續提升數位化業務滲透率，且持續實現超越歷史平均水準的市場成長。這也給年度毛利率帶來了一定的壓力，主要源自於產品組合的變化。

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收益進行權衡。與疫情前相比，我們已開始大幅提高勞動生產力，並降低了設施成本。因此，2019年第一季至2023年第一季的增量利潤率為24%，遠高於2015年第一季至2019年第一季的16.2%，並且隨著時間的推移，我們的槓桿能力也得到了提升。同時，儘管面臨通貨膨脹和供應鏈中斷，我們的存貨週轉天數仍從2019年第一季的175天降至2023年第一季的154天。此外，儘管我們的國民帳組合有所成長，但應收帳款週轉天數也從56天降至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.

藍隊在提升市場差異化優勢的同時，永續地優化了成本結構，降低了資產密集度。如今，我們的業務比疫情前更加強大、高效，這一點在2023年第一季的業績報告中體現得淋漓盡致。接下來，讓我們深入了解這些業績。

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年第一季日銷售額成長9.1%。 2月份的風暴造成了20至40個基點的輕微負面影響，而匯率波動則拖累了70個基點。此外，還有其他幾個因素影響銷售額。首先，價格持續走低。價格因素在本季對銷售額成長的貢獻為290至320個基點，較2022年第一季下降約290個基點，較2022年第四季下降約60個基點。這一趨勢並不令人意外，並且很可能持續到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，我們持續看到幾家主要零售客戶、國際業務以及建築和經銷商業務疲軟。這些情況自2022年第三季以來一直沒有改變。我們的零售客戶在設施和勞動力方面收緊了開支，這與我們北美以外的業務受到影響，此外，地緣政治事件導致的美元走強也加劇了這一局面。建築業務的疲軟反映了我們有意調整分公司佈局，使其專注於服務大型重點客戶，這有助於提高勞動力成本控制。

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，製造業和大客戶業務持續強勁成長，這反映了我們對現場服務（Onsite）的投資以及分支機構結構和銷售角色的調整。儘管如此，3月整體市場活動有所放緩，日均銷售額（DSR）增速放緩至6.8%，其中緊固件的日均增長率僅為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.

一個月的數據不足以形成趨勢。現在就對四月的情況做出準確判斷還為時過早，我們對未來的發展也缺乏足夠的預見性。我們仍然預期我們的市場成長速度將超過市場本身的成長速度，坦白說，目前市場成長乏力。然而，本季的收尾略顯疲軟。

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.

現在就來看看投影片6。2023年第一季的營業利益率為20.2%，高於上年的20%。增量利潤率（即增量營業利益率）為22.7%。毛利率為45.7%，較前一年下降80個基點。這一下降完全是由於產品和客戶組合的變化，因為我們發現非緊固件或緊固件以及現場服務產品的銷售成長表現優於非現場服務產品。價格/成本年比仍為負值，但與第四季相比已顯著收窄。剩餘的差距主要體現在其他產品類別中，該類別2023年第一季的定價措施直到2月才開始實施，而緊固件產品的成本降低則消除了我們在2022年下半年遇到的價格/成本負值。

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為順暢的供應鏈，導致入庫貨物減少，GAAP費用有所上升。另一方面，貨運對利潤的貢獻好於預期。進口貨櫃成本和採購量均出現同比和環比下降，創紀錄的貨運收入使我們能夠有效利用自有船隊費用。這些趨勢預計將在未來幾季持續。

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.

在營運費用方面，過去12個月的分行關閉導致設施費用略有下降，從而為我們提供20個基點的槓桿效應，用於降低辦公室成本。薪資支出也為我們提供80個基點的槓桿效應。 2023年第一季度，公司激勵性薪酬總額創歷史第二高。然而，由於2023年第一季的稅前成長率約為2022年第一季的三分之一，公司激勵性薪資總額下降了接近兩位數。其他營運費用受益於壞帳成本、銷售相關運輸成本的降低以及資產出售利潤的增加，但這些收益很大程度上被IT、一般保險和銷售相關差旅費用的增加所抵消。綜上所述，我們公佈2023年第一季每股收益為0.52美元，較2022年第一季的0.47美元成長超過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.

現在來看幻燈片7。我們在2023年第一季產生了3.89億美元的營運現金流，約佔當期淨利的132%。稍後我會詳細解釋，但現金流轉換率的提升反映了營運資本從2022年第一季的大量現金消耗轉變為2023年第一季的現金來源。強勁的現金流使我們能夠降低當期債務，使2023年第一季的淨債務佔比為10.9%，略高於2022年第一季的10.4%，但低於2022年第四季的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.

應收帳款年增7.3%，主要得益於客戶需求成長以及大客戶（通常帳期較長）佔比增加。應收帳款品質的提升部分抵銷了這一成長。庫存成長3.2%。本期通膨對通膨成長的影響並不顯著。此外，如前所述，全球供應鏈的正常化使我們能夠逐步減少2021年末和2022年初為應對嚴重的供貨瓶頸而特意積累的庫存。我們相信，隨著2023年的發展，庫存調整將持續進行，並釋放更多現金流。

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年第一季的淨資本支出約為3,100萬美元。我們預計2023年全年的淨資本支出仍為2.1億美元至2.3億美元，第一季支出低於預期反映了支出時間表的差異。 2023年全年，我們預計樞紐投資、車隊設備和IT設備的支出將會增加。

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

好了，操作員，接下來就交給您提問和回答問題。

(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?

首先，我想談談目前與區域副總裁們的對話。他們對增加全職員工或管理階層有何看法？我們目前是如何看待勞動力管理和未來的成長的？

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.

我們已經討論過勞動力管理，以及區域副總裁今年的工作重點。前提是，從採購經理人指數（PMI）的現況和工業生產的趨勢來看，我們需要展望未來，制定謹慎的招募計畫。

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.

一月和二月，市場需求成長勢頭良好，我認為我們增加人手也與此相關。到了三月，正如我們之前提到的，市場需求略有放緩。同時，我們也注意到三月的招募規模也略有下降。我們一直以來都強調，要能迅速應對市場變化。

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，我們向第一線員工傳達的訊息是，你們必須做好準備，應對需求下降的情況。而且，這並非我們最近才傳達的訊息。年初的時候，我們就一直在討論這個問題。我認為他們確實做出了積極的回應，在需要的地方增加了資源。透過增加合適的資源，我們看到兼職員工在我們整體業務中所佔的比例持續成長，對吧？而我們新增的全職員工中，有很大一部分來自印度，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.

所以我認為，公司關注的指標是正確的，這能幫助他們了解在勞動力方面需要做些什麼。而且我認為他們正在朝著這個方向努力。令我感到欣慰的是，隨著三月需求放緩，招募人數也相應減少了。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?

這顏色真棒。不過話說回來，CSP業務的成長似乎相對於其他業務來說有點落後。這會影響你們對CSP業務關閉速度的考量，或是從通路策略的角度來看，你們對該業務的定位有何影響？

By CSP growth, what are you referring to?

您所說的CSP成長指的是什麼？

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?

顯然，這裡指的是非國民帳戶業務，不包括不斷成長的國民帳戶和現場服務業務。我猜想，這大部分是比較傳統的分支機構，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不僅支持您提到的本地企業，也支持全國性客戶業務。不過，我想您指的是我們新聞稿中的非全國性客戶部門。非常感謝您的澄清。

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.

當你思考建築業，尤其是經銷商領域正在發生的事情時，你會發現，傳統上，那裡有很多小型客戶，對吧？我的意思是，讓我感到困惑的是，你剛才提到了CSP，對吧？ CSP是我們以前的庫存模式，幾年前我們就開始逐步取消它了。 CSP的目的是吸引那些規模較小的本地建築客戶，為他們提供本地市場的高品質服務等等。而我們分公司的優先事項也略有調整，我們正努力將這些客戶轉移到線上，並騰出時間來專注於市場上的一些大型客戶。

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?

我並不對我們目前看到的情況感到驚訝。我認為，建築業相對於製造業的相對疲軟——而這正是我們努力的目標之一——實際上與國民帳戶和非國民帳戶增長的差異密切相關。所以我認為這些因素都是相互關聯的。這能回答你的問題嗎？

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

確實如此。這完全說得通。我就說到這兒吧。

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，我可以再稍微追問一下嗎？你覺得在建築業，從一些小客戶轉向大型企業，這個過程需要多久？我猜大概一兩年吧，我也不確定。你覺得這個過程要持續多久？

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「放棄這類客戶」這種說法。事實上，我們正​​在嘗試用不同的模式來服務他們，但暫且不論措辭上的差異。我估計，僅從過去15個月的情況來看，我們在這個領域的表現可能會有所下滑。這個過渡期可能會持續到今年年底。

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，到了第四季以及明年，我們會逐漸超越之前的同店銷售額。到那時，同店銷售對我們業務的拖累作用可能會大大降低。

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.

所以我認為你把它看作一個過渡階段是對的，因為我認為它確實如此。一旦我們度過這個過渡期，我認為你今天在那些製造業客戶和大型客戶中看到的成長，將在接下來的兩三個季度隨著我們逐步完成過渡而真正開始顯現出來。

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，如果您回顧我們每年一月份分享的過去幾年的圖表，您會發現我們一直在討論分支機構整合，而我們目前也接近完成這一過程。所以，如果您想想——如果您只考慮我們的客戶群，例如那些我們在數位化佈局方面高度關注的客戶，我們是他們的供應鏈合作夥伴。這些客戶很少，甚至從未光顧過我們的任何一家門市。他們可能根本不知道我們在哪裡。

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，如果你在一個市場中合併幾個門市，實際上你會離另一部分客戶群越來越遠。所以，如果我們展望最終的門市數量目標，我們可能還需要一年才能達成。這一點也與霍爾頓的評論不謀而合。

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，回到克里斯之前的評論，恕我直言，我之前沒提到這一點。我的意思是，這也是小客戶群相對較弱的另一個原因，因為很多時候，當你去那些合併的網點時，正如丹所說，那些原本會光顧這些網點的客戶就不再去了。所以，這也是原因之一。

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?

好的，明白了。是的。抱歉措詞可能不太準確，我一直在努力尋找更合適的表達方式，但沒找到。不過我可以稍微換個話題嗎？您提到您觀察到的某些放緩現象，這確實是一個很有趣的動態。您了解具體情況嗎？您認為客戶正在減少庫存是因為供應鏈改善了，所以這可能是我們看到的現象的一部分原因嗎？或者您認為這實際上是終端市場本身的放緩？

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.

另一個有趣的現像是，你可能會認為隨著供應鏈的正常化，客戶的生產力實際上應該上升而不是下降。所以我很好奇你是否了解這方面的訊息，如果有，我會轉達給你。

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。史蒂夫，區域賽的回饋確實涵蓋了你提到的兩點。首先，他們談到隨著供應鏈的逐步恢復正常，供應商開始縮減產量，原因很簡單：他們的客戶現在能夠——之前可能囤積了一些產品，現在他們可以稍微減少一些了。所以，供應鏈中存在著調整的因素。

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.

但我也從一些區域代表那裡了解到，他們也注意到我們的客戶在資本支出和營運費用方面都收緊了預算。所以我認為這兩種因素都在起作用。

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.

另一方面，從內部視角來看，如果我們從產品線和產品用途的角度來審視我們的業務，回顧一下1月的情況。 OEM緊固件占我們收入的20%到22%，大概在20%左右。這項業務在1月增長了約13.5%。到了3月份，成長了7%。所以，產量有下降。相較之下，例如，我們的安全產品業務在3月份的成長比1月份更加強勁。

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.

說實話，我還沒收到回覆——過去幾天我一直在展會現場。我不知道是否有薪資方面的問題，因為受新冠疫情影響，有些安全措施有所調整。但情況是這樣的——這項業務在二月確實有所下滑。我知道去年也是薪酬方面的問題。但我認為一月和三月沒有薪資方面的問題。我認為這與我們即將部署的強勁勢頭有關。

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.

如果我看一下其他產品，它們的產量也略有下降，而且這些產品的產量也會減少，尤其是在金屬加工領域。

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，請將麥克風靜音。

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

接下來，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，我想請你再詳細談談三月的緊固件銷售趨勢。顯然，環比成長放緩幅度更大，四月的年比數據看起來也差不多。我有兩個小問題。第一，我們是不是應該假設三月的緊固件銷售量為負值？第二，我們該如何看待這部分產品組合對淨利率的影響？因為我認為它通常會提升利潤率，但你也提到了貨櫃成本下降？

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

是的。至於銷售量和價格之間的關係，我正在思考。

By line, it was slightly negative.

以線來看，略為負值。

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.

確實如此。確實如此。所以我認為這是一個因素。而且，這又是我們週期性最強的業務線。丹特別提到了關於OEM緊固件的評論。我的意思是，目前OEM緊固件約占我們緊固件業務的62%。因此，當某個時期出現某種程度的放緩時，就會影響到緊固件業務的銷售量。

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.

你說得對，緊固件的利潤率往往更高。因此，如果緊固件的成長速度低於其他產品，確實會對產品組合產生不利影響。我認為這種情況一直存在，每個週期都是如此。我們經常討論產品組合的影響。

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.

當緊固件的OEM零件出現損耗時，其對利潤的影響與MRO零件出現損耗的情況不同。 OEM緊固件的毛利率並不高於公司整體毛利率，而MRO緊固件的毛利率則高於公司整體毛利率。

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?

這個顏色很有幫助，我明白了。接下來我想問的是，您在上個季度提到，由於鋼材價格和運輸成本上漲，可能需要與一些大供應商重新談判價格。您也提到運輸成本有所緩解，但我認為近幾個月來價格基本上保持穩定。我想了解一下，關於鋼材價格上漲的談判，您有什麼新的進展嗎？

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.

我們非常關注鋼材價格和運輸成本。這是我們與客戶的承諾。我們將為他們的業務找到品質最佳、價格最優、可靠性最高的供應鏈。我們始終與客戶保持密切溝通。

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.

但我們也身處在一個瞬息萬變的市場。幾個月來，緊固件價格一直保持穩定。這一點也反映在我們的商品成本上。短期內，這也有助於提升我們的毛利率，因為在6到9個月前，我們確實面臨一些壓力。現在這種壓力有所緩解，這也反映在我們的財務數據中。

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.

我認為這些對話——我們一直在討論，我們的目標是與那些了解我們成本核算時間安排的客戶溝通，正如丹所說，我們也明白我們有義務根據情況進行調整。我認為我們的客戶一直都非常配合，幫助我們了解產品何時能以更低的價格上市等等。

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，我們一直覺得，到了第二季度，相關活動可能會更多，也需要做出一些調整。我仍然認為，這些活動很可能是第二季或第三季才會出現的。但再次強調，您應該明白，我們正在努力將可能需要對客戶進行的任何價格下調與成本的下降同步進行。

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.

所以我當然理解大家的擔憂。但是，我認為我們在價格和成本方面做得很好。我認為團隊在這個環節也做得非常好。我們的目標是保持價格和成本的平衡。

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

接下來的問題來自 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。關於這一點——也就是您之前的回答，這正是我想要您討論的，也就是您如何根據供應鏈中的實際成本來製定客戶定價策略，而不是搶先一步應對價格上漲，或者滯後於價格下跌。您已經對此做了很大程度的闡述，但我還是想確認一下。您的貨櫃價格下降了，鋼材價格略有上漲，您說緊固件價格目前基本上已經穩定。所以，就目前來看，您預計2023年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.

就目前而言，我的答案是否定的。我們目前還沒有調整價格的計劃。再次強調，我們可能需要調整價格，這並不令人驚訝。我們知道在什麼情況下需要調整（聽不清楚）。此外，我們對成本會計非常清楚。因此，我們確實在努力使這兩者保持一致。

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.

所以如你所知，在通貨膨脹時期，我們的定價始終沒有超過成本，這是我們有意為之。但隨著通貨膨脹週期的結束，從價格/成本的角度來看，我們的定價實際上略微落後於成本，因為儘管我們做出了許多調整以應對市場變化，但考慮到成本方面的巨大波動，這些調整仍然遠遠不夠。

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.

正如我們兩個季度前討論的那樣，我們目前看到的情況是，緊固件方面的成本最終為負值。當時我們預計成本會跟上定價，而本季也基本實現了這一目標。但展望未來，我們的想法是——這也是我們一直在與客戶明確溝通的內容——在某些情況下，我們需要根據您提到的變數降低價格，但我們應該能夠透過成本核算來大致追蹤這些變化。

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.

戴夫，如果你把我們的業務分成三個部分，就像霍爾頓說的那樣，就緊固件方面而言，我認為我們做得非常出色。當然，其中也存在一些不盡人意的地方——有些變化確實相當劇烈。

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.

就安全產品而言，我們對市場需求有著非常清楚的了解。超過一半的業務是透過自動販賣機完成的。因此，我們對這部分業務的了解非常透徹，也能夠很好地應對。正如霍爾頓所提到的，本季我們對其他產品線的價格進行了一些調整，因為我們可能過於專注於緊固件和安全產品這部分業務，而忽略了其他部分業務，所以我們做出了一些調整。因此，本季我們提高了部分非緊固件、非安全產品的價格。

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

我們的下一個問題來自沃爾夫研究公司的奈傑爾·科伊。

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?

我知道貨運收入佔比很小，但您提到了大約14%的成長。顯然，利潤率非常高。所以我想知道，鑑於目前零擔貨運量的成長趨勢，您是如何實現如此高的成長率的？而且聽起來您預計這種成長勢頭還會持續下去。所以我想知道是什麼因素推動了這種成長？

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，隨著時間的推移，你可能會犯這樣的錯誤——你專注於少數幾件事，而房間裡的精力只夠集中精力處理少數幾件事。有時，其他事情就會偏離這個重點。我想說，近年來我們在貨運方面可能在這方面犯了一些錯誤。而這部分原因，我認為要歸咎於我自己，因為我關注的重點是什麼，我強調的重點是什麼。

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.

當情況變得非常混亂時，有時你必須轉變思路，告訴大家：「嘿，夥計們，我們需要投入一些精力來解決這個問題，因為這是我們共同面臨的問題，需要我們去解決。」 所以，我認為我們可能正在恢復到三四年前的一些貨運定價習慣，這些習慣在過去幾年裡可能有所減弱。而新冠疫情以及生活中其他種種幹擾因素都影響了這個趨勢。

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.

另一方面，雖然我們之前在運費收取方面有所疏忽，但我們利用自有卡車運輸貨物的能力卻非常出色。所以我們目前處於這兩種優勢並存的狀態。我們的運費收取水平可能已經恢復到應有的水平，而且我們自有運輸網絡的貨運量也得到了提升，這可謂是雙管齊下，相得益彰。

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?

我認為——我的意思是，現在有很多因素在起作用，有些是長期可持續的，有些則是眼前的。但我們已經多次提到工廠支出會增加。隨著工廠支出在我們業務中所佔比例的增加，我們規劃自己的物流也會變得更容易，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，我們看到第三方貨運量有所下降，部分原因正是這種趨勢。我認為這種情況還會持續下去。我們已經或至少正在進行一些路線整合和路線重新安排，我認為這將提高業務效率，而且這種持續改進我認為是可持續的。

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，您提到的這一點很重要，因為隨著我們專注於中小企業業務，收入不斷增長，而我們半掛車隊的成本結構卻相當穩定。因此，隨著收入的成長，我們實際上也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%.

本季還有另一個利多因素：首先，貨櫃成本大幅下降。這無疑是利好。我認為同比下降了大約75%。其次，由於我們正在採取措施清理庫存，本季我們的貨櫃吞吐量也大幅下降。第一季我們的貨櫃吞吐量也下降了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.

我認為後兩個問題並非長期問題，只是對過去幾年出現的一些情況進行調整而已。我認為這些問題會持續幾季。但像是工廠支出、第三方貨運量減少、路線整合等等，我認為這些措施會繼續改善業務。

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.

最大的變數在於需求，對吧？因為我們的貨運收入與其他收入並無二致。如果業務量開始下降，貨運收入可能會減少，而穩定的成本基礎反而會對我們不利。所以我認為需求方面仍有變數。但從執行層面來看，公司在貨運方面已經取得了一些顯著的進展。

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。太好了。還有一個小問題。我們剛才詳細討論了三月的銷售情況。但您提到了二月的天氣影響。您沒有提到三月的情況，但有些公司把三月的業績下滑歸咎於天氣。所以我想問一下，三月下旬的銷售疲軟是否可能受到天氣的影響？

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。我們已經嘗試提高我們之前提到的痛苦閾值。我能找到一個認為一月份天氣狀況不佳的區域副總裁嗎？當然可以。我能找到一個認為三月天氣狀況不佳的人嗎？可以。但這還沒達到值得討論的閾值。二月的情況確實如此。

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，順便提一下，在霍爾頓回答第一個問題的時候，我快速地看了一下。我們2022年第一季的運費佔銷售額的比例與2019年第一季完全相同。過去兩年，這個比例下降了大約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?

先簡單問一下定價方面的問題。我覺得大家對今年的定價預期差異很大，至少我理解是這樣。你們可能覺得價格會下降1到2個百分點，也可能會上漲1到2個百分點，這取決於實際情況。我很好奇，在第一季之後，考慮到你們二月份的舉措，以及你們剛才提到的緊固件投入成本問題，你們現在對今年的定價有什麼預期？

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?

此外，我還想到你們二月在非緊固件、非安全防護用品銷售領域採取的價格策略。您認為這是否與三月該領域銷售放緩有關？

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.

我先簡單談談你問題的最後一部分，然後讓霍頓公司來詳細解釋。關於最後一部分，如果你回顧我們剛才討論的OEM緊固件數據，你會發現1月到2月的下滑與生產業務有關。我們的OEM緊固件銷量下降了一半，成長率從13.5%降至7%。所以，這並非價格調整所致。如果你看其他產品線，你會發現銷售下滑其實發生在30天之後。所以，我的意思是，這主要與我們的生產業務有關，而不是其他業務。

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。而且坦白說，這些價格上漲是在本季末才實施的。所以我不確定在這麼短的時間內是否會出現你提到的那種反應。但即便如此，我們並不認為這會對整體業績造成不利影響。是的。所以我們並沒有看到這種情況。我也不認為會看到這種情況。

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.

關於整體定價，請記住，我給的價格範圍之所以這麼大，是因為我們最終無法準確預測由於合約等因素，我們需要向客戶做出多少價格讓步，對吧？所以我的觀點是，如果需求疲軟，而且由於合約等原因，我們面臨著很大的價格調整壓力，那麼我們的價格可能會下降1個百分點。如果這種情況沒有發生（目前還沒有發生），那麼價格可能會上漲1個百分點。這就是定價方面存在的變數。

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.

再次強調，這與價格/成本無關，我們認為價格/成本將保持不變，但這正是我們給出更廣泛價格區間的原因。我認為情況依然如此。我們在之前的一個問題中也略有提及，我估計我們會在第二季和第三季對價格進行一些調整。

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.

不過，我之前也跟一些人說過，我認為如果一切照舊，價格漲幅應該在0%到2%的範圍內，而且可能更接近這個範圍的下半部。但我們確實對其他產品的價格做了一些調整。所以我想說的是，如果我們不需要調整緊固件的價格，我估計今年的價格漲幅會處於0%到2%範圍的上半部。

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.

但現在最大的變數變成了緊固件定價。如果我們在第二季和第三季大幅降低緊固件價格，那麼價格區間的上半部就會下降。而我們目前還無法確定具體的影響程度。希望我解釋得沒有讓人困惑。

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，這個顏色很有幫助。也許我接下來會問的是今年的毛利率。我記得一月我們談話時，你預計毛利率會下降50到100個基點。聽起來定價可能會有所改善。價格/成本比可能持平，我也不確定。運費方面－聽起來也好多了。所以我想知道你現在對這個框架的看法是否有改變。

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。所以，價格/成本——影響毛利率的大部分因素都在意料之中，對吧？這種組合的影響程度——同樣，考慮到本季的發展情況，這也在意料之中。如果我考慮價格/成本因素，它的表現基本上符合我們上個季度討論時的預期。

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.

實際上，唯一出乎意料的因素就是貨運部分。我們執行得相當不錯。而且，我相信那些有利於貨運的因素，在第二季和第三季仍將保持不變。因此，貨運可能提高了我對全年毛利率的預期，但這確實是與去年——或者說上個季度的討論——預期有所不同的唯一因素。

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

好的，這很有幫助。我再擠出時間加一個進去吧。

Do we have two?

我們有兩個嗎？

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

是的。太好了。謝謝。

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

我們的下一個問題來自 Melius Research 的 Jacob Levinson。

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——我知道現在還處於非常早期的階段，但我只是好奇您是否聽說過任何關於信用壓力對客戶或您的一些小型競爭對手的影響方面的消息？

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。實際上，我們減少了壞帳支出——這實際上提升了我們本季的利潤率。我們並沒有看到任何顯著的——我們目前沒有看到任何與此相關的業務問題。

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，明白了。那我再問一個問題。我注意到，儘管成長有所放緩，但你們仍然計劃今年投入約2億美元的資本支出。這是否部分是因為過去幾年受新冠疫情影響，有些工程未能順利完成？還是說，10%的季度成長率顯然還達不到衰退的程度？

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.

嗯，這是一方面。另一方面，我們一直在根據長期需求增加基礎​​設施。比方說，我們正在擴建位於德州丹頓和達拉斯-沃斯堡地區的配送中心，也正在鹽湖城市場興建新的配送中心。所以，我們一直在增加產能，因為我們現有的產能都在成長。

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.

如果你看看我們的FMI（金融市場基礎設施​​），它目前相當強勁，而且這是我們正在增加的一項資本支出。最後一點，如果讓我回顧近年來我們可能最難增加投入的領域，那就是車輛方面，因為很多東西都無法按時到貨。例如，我們無法依要求採購所需的道奇Ram皮卡，也無法依要求採購到所需的半掛卡車。現在這種情況正在好轉。因此，部分資本支出將投入運輸領域。

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，我去參觀了我們的一個生產基地。很高興告訴大家，大約一周半前，我收到了一張照片，照片中是一批正在生產線上生產的Fastenal拖車。所以，在這些方面，我們現在比6個月前甚至12個月前做得更好了。

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

接下來的問題來自 Tommy Moll 和 Stephens 的提問。

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.

我想先談談營運支出（OpEx）。如果我的計算沒錯，第一季員工相關支出成長不到銷售額成長的一半，這很不錯。但我估計您可能不會讓我們相信第二季或今年剩餘時間也能維持這樣的水平。所以，如果您能大致說明一下您對第二季的預期，那就太好了。另外，如果您能對全年情況做一些定性分析，也歡迎分享。

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。我不確定我是否一定要推翻你先前的說法。我認為了解事情的根源很重要，對吧？我的意思是，我們之所以能夠以這種方式利用資源，是因為我們今年的成長速度不如去年。所以，我想再次強調，我認為我們本季在業務激勵方面支付了相當可觀的薪酬。雖然不如去年同期豐厚，但這並不令人意外。

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.

但考慮到今年剩餘時間的業績，我們在第二季和第三季仍將實現一些相當可觀的業績目標。因此，我預計第二季和第三季的激勵獎金發放情況良好。我們會觀察市場趨勢，但根據我們最近一個季度的成長情況來看，我相信今年的獎金發放額會低於去年同期水準。

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，在今年大部分時間裡，我們的激勵性薪酬都會比往年有所下降，這有助於我們降低與薪資相關的支出。

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.

我們激勵性薪酬的很大一部分——我相信我們在委託書中對此有相當詳細的說明——與稅前利潤增長直接掛鉤。所以，如果你回顧去年的情況，你會發現第一、二、三季的激勵性薪酬成長顯著。實際上，第二季的成長幅度最大，但我認為第二季比第一季只高出約50萬美元。所以只是名義上的成長，然後在第四季開始回落。

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.

所以，根據我們獲利成長相對於上年同期的情況，這給我們第一季以及第二和第三季帶來了一些緩衝，除非經濟狀況出乎意料地好轉，那將是一個幸福的煩惱。

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?

感謝您的見解，我的第二個問題想探討一個更高層次的策略問題。您從槓桿率和資產密集度方面對疫情前結構性改進的分析非常有幫助。顯然，這兩項舉措都取得了一些進展。展望2023年，您認為有哪些重點領域？今年還有哪些工作要完成？您目前在組織內部重點推進的領域有哪些？

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.

是的，如果你首先想到的是成長驅動因素的話。但這不是你的問題。對我來說，成長驅動因素首先體現在我們正在進行的結構性變革上，包括客戶獲取管道的物理變化，例如品牌管道與線上管道的對比，以及我們在各個管道（例如FMI等）中使用的工具，以便高效地為客戶提供優質服務。

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.

如果我思考影響我們現金流的因素，我們經常談到與客戶的契約，其中包含許多面向。首先，確保產品品質優良、供應充足、可靠性高且價格合理。其中，供應方面，由於過去6到18個月情況混亂，我們不得不將大量的營運資金存貨計入資產負債表。這些存貨可能會延遲交付，甚至可能追溯到幾年前，因為我們在2020年承接了大量安全產品業務。不過，這個問題已經解決。

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.

所以，展望今年，我預想現金流會非常強勁，就像我們在第一季看到的那樣，因為我們可以把庫存週轉期從幾天延長到幾週。我們的應收帳款管理也做得非常好。基本上，我們現在的財務長比十年前更出色。諸如此類的因素都起到了積極作用。

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.

但綜合考慮這些因素，我們內部討論過所謂的「35%目標」。具體來說，如果你查看我們的內部財務報表（這些報表會對外公佈），其中三項指標中的兩項是：我們逐個業務部門查看應收帳款；我們查看滿載庫存，包括本地庫存和分銷庫存的分配情況；然後我們查看本地車輛。我們綜合考慮這三項資產，認為對於每月營業額17.5萬美元或20萬美元的分行來說，理想的資產配置比例是年銷售額的35%以上。

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.

過去幾年，由於新冠疫情、通貨膨脹和供應鏈中斷，我們一直未能實現這個目標。我們將繼續朝著這個方向努力。我不知道霍頓是否認為我們能達到35%。他可能更傾向於37%，但我相信我們可以達到35%。如果國際業務允許，霍頓或我都能從中受益。而且，如果我們成長勢頭良好，無論哪個數字我都滿意。

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.

但真正讓我們能夠合理化庫存的，是當你——從概念上講，當你透過供應鏈網絡調配庫存，並且對庫存情況有清晰的了解時——我們65%的收入都來自FMI（食品、市場、工業）業務。我們對需求有著非常清晰的了解。你可以管理好庫存——暫且不考慮像去年那樣的中斷，例如，貨物需要額外30天才能通過海運和港口，而你需要預留出這些時間。撇開這些因素不談，這本身就是一個更有效率的模式——無論從營運資本或人力資本的角度來看都是如此。

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.

這一點在本季的現金流中體現得淋漓盡致。您也從我們的營運支出中看到了這一點，尤其是在我們人力成本組成方面。

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.

我可能唯一要補充的是，如果你和我們的銷售執行副總裁們聊聊，你會發現，很多你現在看到的成果，其實都是我們利用了之前已經部署的資源，對吧？例如，利用分公司的調整、數位化佈局、人員提升、新角色、專業化等等。這些我們都部署好了，但還沒有完全發揮它們對業務的最大效益。我認為，我們的銷售執行副總裁們相信，兩三年後我們的效率會比現在更高，這方面還有很大的提升空間。

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.

從庫存角度來看，我們也在採取許多措施來提高系統週轉速度等等。但我們仍然有很多進口庫存需要消化。考慮到疫情期間受限的情況下，我們不得不提前很久規劃採購，因此我們可能將訂購週期延長了一倍。現在，即使我們將訂購週期從4個月延長到8個月，甚至縮短到7個月，我們仍然有很大的提升空間，才能更接近疫情前的水平。我不知道我們能否完全恢復到疫情前的狀態。我們的訂單履行率已經提高了，但仍有很大的提升空間。

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.

所以，我們再次重申——我們對公司現狀的評論意在表明我們已經到達了目的地。這是為了強調我們已經沿著一條穩步前進的道路走了一段路，但這條路仍然有發展的空間。

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。如果還剩最後一個問題的話。我看現在離整點還有4分鐘，我們想好好結束。就最後一個問題吧，我們會回答的，否則我們就結束。

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克里斯·史奈德。

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?

我想問一個問題。具體來說，我們想了解三月下半月疲軟的市場狀況。聽起來這個月的尾聲比月初還要疲軟。有沒有哪些終端市場或產品線在整個三月都出現了負成長？因為你們之前提到過零售客戶、國際市場以及建築業等過去三個季度一直比較疲軟的領域。那麼這些領域只是變得更弱了嗎？還是說隨著三月的進行，還有其他領域也出現了疲軟？

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

我們基本上對具體的終端市場了解不多。我能告訴你的是…

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，一個月內。當然，在製造業領域，這個特定領域的情況可能會有點棘手。但是——我可以告訴你的是，在我們紫杉烷類藥物領域之外，整體需求仍然相當樂觀…

That's Texas and Louisiana (inaudible).

那是德克薩斯州和路易斯安那州（聽不清楚）。

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，石油和天然氣產業非常發達，前景依然十分樂觀。所以我認為這個市場表現良好。坦白說，我們其他大部分地區的經濟在三月都出現了不同程度的疲軟。而且，這種疲軟波及整個製造業，並非侷限於某個特定市場。

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.

我再補充一點。這不是（聽不清楚），這只是我的一個觀察。過去兩天，我和全球營運部門——包括我們的實體、客戶和潛在客戶——進行了許多討論。我們發現了一個非常重要的共同點。很多人都說，我們來這裡的部分原因是想從技術角度了解你們正在做的事情，以便幫助我們的業務。

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.

當生活節奏放緩，噪音減少，煩惱也隨之減少時，好處之一就是，過去12個月、24個月甚至36個月裡，因為世界不斷重複著試圖終結一切的循環，你一直沒能去做那些事情。我認為這有利於我們搶佔市場份額。

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.

即使就公司本身而言，客戶——如果你看看我們的——我們說的是我們前100名客戶，如果你稍微縮小範圍，開始查看前10名客戶，你會發現真正對我們造成打擊的是，我們前10名客戶的規模比6個月前有所下降。這是經濟因素造成的。但是，如果你看看第10到50位客戶，他們的規模都在成長。如果你看看第50到100名客戶，他們的成長勢頭良好，因為我們正在不斷擴大市場份額。這讓我更加振奮。因為從長遠來看，我們的成功來自於每天不斷擴大市場份額。短期內，經濟情勢如何如何，我們無法預料。

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.

我們公司營運狀況良好，在像今年這樣的年份裡，我們能產生更多現金流。我們更希望把這些現金流投入到業務發展中。但在像今年這樣的年份裡，或許我們會給股東多一點回報。不過，關鍵在於著眼於公司的長期發展機遇，而我對公司的未來依然充滿信心。

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

好了，現在是整點了。感謝您今天對Fastenal的關注。祝大家四月愉快！謝謝大家。

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。您可以斷開線路了。感謝您的參與。