The past two months have been a nice rebound for the distributor after a weaker May-June period.
Fastenal reported its August sales results on Tuesday, showing a second-straight month of strong daily growth for the distributor after an underwhelming June and May.

The Winona, MN-based company posted total August sales of $531 million, up 14.2 percent year-over-year and up 7.9 percent from July. Fastenal's July daily sales were up 9.0 percent year-over-year — a slight deceleration from July's 9.7 percent, but a far cry from 1.7 percent growth in June and a 3.2 percent decline in May.

Geographically, Fastenal's August US sales increased 7.2 percent year-over-year (+8.2 percent in July); increased 18.7 percent in Canada/Mexico (+20.5 percent in July); and increased 24.2 percent to the rest of international (+11.4 percent in July).

By end market, Fastenal's August sales increased 19.7 percent year-over-year to manufacturing customers (+22.5 percent in August) and increased 10.1 percent to non-residential construction customers (+9.5 percent in July).

By product line, Fastenal's August fastener sales grew 18.9 percent year-over-year (+22.3 percent in July), while safety sales — which surged as high as 136 percent in May 2020 and have regulated since — were down 3.8 percent (-5.4 percent in July), and sales of 'Other' were up 8.5 percent (+9.0 percent in July).

Other notes from Fastenal's August sales report:

--National accounts daily sales growth was 17.0 percent year-over-year, up from 15.0 in July and far above the flat growth seen a year
--Non-national accounts daily sales decreased 1.0 percent, down from growth of 3.0 percent in July and 11.0 percent in June
--77.0 percent of Fastenal's top 100 national accounts grew sales in August, up from 72.0 percent in July and 71.0 percent in June
--65.7 percent of Fastenal's public branches were growing sales in August, down from 67.0 percent in July
--Fastenal ended August with a total headcount of 20,229, down 91 from July and down 0.3 percent year-over-year
--Fastenal ended July with a total headcount of 20,320, essentially identical to June and down 0.4 percent year-over-year
-Total full-time selling headcount of 13,388 was down 1.5 percent YoY, with in-market locations headcount (11,295) up 0.2 percent and non-in-market headcount (2,043) up 9.5 percent
-Distribution/transportation full-time headcount of 2,720 was up 5.0 percent YoY
-Manufacturing full-time headcount of 626 was down 0.3 percent YoY
-Administrative full-time headcount of 1,540 was up 10.3 percent YoY

Source: Industrial Distribution