Global Industrial (GIC) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Revenue Rises 10.2%, Operating Income Up 24.3%

Global Industrial Company (NYSE: GIC) reported sustained sales growth and stronger operating leverage in Q3 2026. Volume and mix drove most of the revenue increase, while disciplined pricing and cost management supported profitability despite higher transportation costs.

Key Takeaways

• Q3 revenue increased 10.2% year over year to $389.5 million, while average daily sales rose 8.5%—the fourth consecutive quarter of high-single-digit growth.
• Operating income from continuing operations reached $32.7 million, up 24.3%. Excluding a $2 million tariff refund benefit, operating income increased 16.7% and operating margin improved 50 basis points.
• U.S. revenue grew 9.3%, while Canadian revenue increased 28.3% in local currency. Large strategic accounts and the industrial and retail verticals led growth.
• Gross margin was 35.7%, including a 60-basis-point benefit from previously received tariff refunds. Management expects Q4 gross margin to approximate the 34.5% recorded in Q4 2025.
• The company ended September 30 with $119.2 million in cash, no debt and more than $119.8 million of excess credit facility availability.
• Global Industrial declared a quarterly dividend of $0.28 per common share and a special cash dividend of $1.00 per share.

Key Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

Revenue growth primarily reflected volume and mix gains, with pricing contributing approximately 2 percentage points. September growth moderated to 7%, but management said early-Q4 growth had returned toward the third quarter’s average daily sales growth rate.

The company’s relationship-led B2B strategy continued to focus on vertical specialization, strategic accounts and deeper customer penetration. Management reported strong double-digit performance among its largest strategic accounts, led by industrial and retail customers.

Digital and e-procurement channels generated double-digit revenue growth. Global Industrial said tighter integration with customers’ purchasing systems is increasing recurring activity and helping the company capture a larger share of customer spending.

Management also highlighted opportunities to serve more facilities and product categories within existing accounts. Product mix increasingly includes national brands, private brands and drop-ship sales, which has supported inventory efficiency.

Management Guidance

Global Industrial expects Q4 2026 to contain 61 selling days, compared with 66 in Q4 2025. Management said the five-day reduction creates an approximately 8% headwind to reported GAAP revenue growth, making average daily sales a more meaningful measure of underlying performance.

Management expects Q4 gross margin to be in line with the 34.5% recorded in Q4 2025. The outlook reflects parcel peak-season surcharges, elevated fuel and ocean freight costs, and Canadian tariffs on U.S.-sourced products.

The company continues to expect 2026 capital expenditures of $3 million to $4 million, primarily for maintenance investments and distribution network equipment. Management expects a tax rate of 26% to 26.5% for the remainder of 2026.

Risks and Watchpoints

Transportation costs remain a key pressure. Diesel prices rose substantially during August and September, affecting the company’s freight-intensive, large-item distribution model. Annual parcel surcharges will remain in place through mid-January, while ocean freight costs have increased because of shipping disruptions, fuel expenses and weather-related effects.

Canadian tariffs on products sourced from the U.S. are creating additional cost pressure. Management also cited broader macroeconomic conditions and other sources of volatility as factors requiring continued attention.

Gross margin exited September below the quarterly average. The remaining benefit from IEEPA tariff refunds is expected to be immaterial in any individual future quarter.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

On gross margin resilience, management attributed performance to pricing discipline and proactive cost management. The company absorbs part of annual parcel surcharges and passes part through to customers, but expects freight and fuel costs to remain near-term headwinds.

On inventory, management said seasonal inventory typically declines late in the third quarter before rebuilding ahead of Lunar New Year. A broader mix of national brands, private brands and drop-ship sales has also supported inventory turns, although the company intends to continue investing in product availability.

On sustaining sales momentum, management emphasized e-procurement connectivity and specialized sales coverage across industrial, commercial, retail, public sector and healthcare customers. The company believes the groundwork established over the past year can support growth into 2027 and beyond.

On SG&A leverage, management said the primary driver was fixed-cost absorption from higher revenue. It noted that SG&A leverage is typically stronger in the higher-revenue second and third quarters than in the first and fourth quarters.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Global Industrial's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Smargiassi of The Plunkett Group. Please go ahead.

Mike Smargiassi

Thank you, and welcome to the Global Industrial Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Today's call will include formal remarks from Anesa Chaibi, Chief Executive Officer; and Tex Clark, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Formal remarks will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Today's discussion may include certain forward-looking statements. It should be understood that actual results could differ materially from those projected due to a number of factors, including those described under the forward-looking statements caption and under Risk Factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The earnings release is available on the company's website and has been filed with the SEC on a Form 8-K. This call is the property of Global Industrial Company.

I will now turn the call over to Anesa.

Anesa Chaibi

Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm really excited about the progress we are making to take the company to the next level. We delivered another strong quarter with sustained sales growth, improved profitability and continued progress executing our go-to-market strategy. We continue to build momentum across the business and see significant opportunities ahead.

Revenue increased 10.2%, and average daily sales grew an impressive 8.5%. This marks our fourth consecutive quarter of high single-digit average daily sales growth. Our revenue growth, combined with solid operating leverage and disciplined execution, is driving improved profitability, resulting in a 24.3% increase in operating income.

We continue to generate significant cash and today announced a quarterly dividend of $0.28 and a special cash dividend of $1 per share of common stock. These dividends reflect our commitment to returning capital to shareholders while still maintaining ample financial flexibility to execute on our future growth opportunities.

Over the past year, we have been repositioning Global Industrial toward a more customer-centric, relationship-led B2B model. Our focus has been on developing deeper understanding of our customers, strengthening our vertical expertise and better aligning our sales, marketing and merchandising teams to serve our customers' needs.

We are seeing tangible results from our efforts. Growth continues to be led by our industrial and retail customer verticals with strong double-digit performance among our largest strategic accounts. Our vertical specialization is helping us identify larger opportunities and deliver more comprehensive solutions. This targeted approach is deepening customer relationships, expanding our participation in customer projects and driving greater share of wallet. We are becoming more integrated into our customers' day-to-day operations and becoming an extension of their teams.

Importantly, these results reinforce our confidence in the strategy and the significant opportunity with our existing customer base. Many of our customers operate multiple facilities and have purchasing needs across a broad range of industrial solutions and MRO products. We believe there is a substantial opportunity to expand our role as a trusted supplier, broaden the range of solutions and products we provide and capture a larger portion of their spend.

We also continue to enhance our digital and e-procurement capabilities, delivering double-digit revenue growth through these channels during this past quarter. By integrating more closely into our customers' purchasing processes and making it easier to do business with Global Industrial, we are driving more recurring purchasing activity and building stronger, resilient, longer-term customer relationships.

Our focus on customer and supplier engagement was also evident at our recent national trade show in Dallas, which brought together more than 1,200 attendees with more than 500 customer and 460 supply partner representatives, making it one of our largest turnouts in the event's history. The show provided an opportunity to showcase our broad offering of products and solutions, connect directly with customers and explore new opportunities. Just as important, we received direct feedback from many of our top customers, providing valuable insights into how we can support their businesses, improve efficiency, simplify purchasing and keep their operations running strong.

Overall, I'm proud of our performance and the continued progress we are making. Our go-to-market strategy is delivering results. Our teams are executing well, and we believe we have a strong foundation to support long-term, sustainable and profitable growth.

I will now turn the call over to Tex to discuss our financials in more detail.

Thomas Clark

Thank you, Anesa. Third quarter revenue was $389.5 million, an increase of 10.2%. In the quarter, U.S. revenue improved 9.3%, and Canada delivered another exceptional performance, with revenue up 28.3% in local currency. Growth continues to be led by our large strategic accounts and our industrial and retail verticals. Revenue primarily benefited from volume and mix gains as we recorded our fourth consecutive quarter of volume improvement, with pricing contributing approximately 2 percentage points towards growth. Our demand profile was relatively consistent throughout the period, with year-over-year growth moderating slightly in September to 7%. In the early parts of Q4, growth has continued in line with the ADS growth from the third quarter.

As we look through the end of 2026, it is important to highlight a significant difference in the number of selling days in Q4 this year compared to last year. The fourth quarter of 2026 will include only 61 selling days. This compares to 66 selling days in the fourth quarter of 2025, during which we generated revenue of approximately $5.24 million per selling day. This reduction in selling days creates an 8% headwind to reported GAAP revenue growth, making average daily sales a more meaningful measure of our underlying business performance in the fourth quarter.

Gross profit for the quarter was $138.9 million. Gross margin was 35.7%. Gross margin included 60 basis points of benefit from the recognition of previously received tariff refunds. We expect any remaining IEEPA tariff refund benefits recognized in any individual future quarter to be immaterial. We continue to effectively manage our margin profile in a challenging environment, reflecting disciplined pricing and proactive cost management.

Transportation costs remain elevated, with fuel increasing substantially during August and September after a brief sequential reduction early in the quarter. Annual peak season parcel surcharges took effect the last week of the third quarter and will continue through mid-January. Ocean freight costs have also increased due to shipping disruptions, fuel and weather-related impacts. In addition, Canadian tariffs on U.S.-sourced products are creating incremental cost pressures in our Canadian business. We expect these factors to remain headwinds in the fourth quarter and anticipate gross margins to be in line with the results realized in the fourth quarter of last year.

Selling, general and administrative spending for the quarter was $106.2 million, an improvement of 90 basis points as a percentage of sales, reflecting fixed cost leverage on solid revenue growth. Operating income from continuing operations was $32.7 million. Excluding the $2 million benefit of the tariff refund, operating income grew 16.7%, and operating margin improved 50 basis points. We delivered operating cash flow from continuing operations of $44.5 million in the quarter.

Total depreciation and amortization expense in the quarter was $2 million, while capital expenditures were $1 million. We continue to expect 2026 capital expenditures in the range of $3 million to $4 million, which primarily reflects maintenance-related investments and equipment within our distribution network. We currently expect a tax rate between 26% and 26.5% for the remainder of 2026.

I will now turn to our balance sheet. We have a strong and liquid balance sheet. As of September 30, we had approximately $119.2 million in cash, no debt, and over $119.8 million of excess availability under our credit facility.

I will now turn it back over to Anesa for closing remarks.

Anesa Chaibi

Thank you, Tex. Our go-to-market strategy is delivering results, as shown by our third quarter performance. We are strengthening customer relationships, winning large opportunities and capturing greater share of wallet. Importantly, this performance is translating into improved operating leverage and profitability.

We believe Global Industrial is well positioned for continued profitable growth. We have a differentiated go-to-market strategy, a growing base of strategic customer relationships and significant opportunities to expand the total addressable market we pursue. We also see potential opportunities to complement our organic growth through strategic acquisitions that would enhance our capabilities and market reach. Combined with our strong balance sheet, we believe we have a solid foundation for long-term value creation.

We remain mindful of the broader macroeconomic environment, cost pressures and other sources of volatility. We continue to proactively manage those uncontrollables while remaining focused on the areas within our control, executing on our strategy and building on the progress we have made thus far. Against this backdrop, the Global Industrial team is executing well, and I'm pleased with our performance. I would like to thank all of our employees for their continued dedication, as well as our customers, supplier partners and investors for their ongoing support.

Thank you for your continued interest in Global Industrial. Operator, please open the call up for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Michael Francis with William Blair.

Question-and-Answer Session

Michael Francis

Good quarter here. I wanted to start with gross margins. You talked about a lot of sort of negative takes there. But at the same time, your gross margin ex the tariff refund seems to have held up better than a lot of your distribution peers.

So I would love to know what you would credit that margin holding up for and how we should think about the drivers? I know you ran through them, but maybe if you could put any sort of numbers around any of the drivers going forward, that would be great as well.

Anesa Chaibi

Yes. Go ahead, Tex. Why don't you take it, and I'll add in anything.

Thomas Clark

Yes, absolutely, Michael. So as we think about it, yes, we definitely were pleased with our margin performance in the quarter at 35.7% as reported and then again, excluding any of that onetime gain just as that flow-through continued at 35.1%. So a nice sequential gross margin improvement from Q2 to Q3.

As we look throughout the course, as the quarter progressed, we actually exited the quarter with a little bit lower gross margin in September. And we look forward to those Q4 gross margin headwinds that we had just highlighted. And those things, as mentioned, again, typically, every season, our parcel business is subject to the peak season surcharges that UPS and other carriers implement that typically run from late September through mid-January. That's something that we'll continue to see. And we know that, that comes in every year. We absorb some of that, we pass some of that through, but we know that's always a margin headwind.

A recent change in the market would have been the recent uptick in terms of the ocean cost as well. As you know, we import a fair amount of product, primarily our private brand goods. Those ocean freight costs are inflated right now. We've seen that tick up over the last many weeks. And right now, we anticipate that staying elevated for at least the short term. So that then mixes into our cost of sales and impacts gross margin pressure.

And then finally, let me just talk to fuel. I think we all know about the cost of diesel in the U.S. right now. And when we look at the quarter, early in the period in July, there's actually that slight downtick in diesel prices, late June into July, which helped our margins early in the quarter. But as we saw, those accelerated substantially in August and September, which provides a lot of pressure onto our gross margin line given our heavy LTL nature and large, big and bulky products that do ship cross-country. So all those are headwinds, and that's why we kind of think about where our Q4 margin may look like more similar to last year's gross margin, which came in about 34.5% last year in the fourth quarter, given some of these headwinds we're seeing.

Anesa Chaibi

Yes. The only thing I would add, Michael, is we have pricing discipline now built into the way that we're approaching all of these uncontrollables, if you will. And so that consistency is what we're seeing pull through and enable us to deliver on what we're -- how we're executing and delivering on our profitability profile.

Michael Francis

That's good to hear. One more thing here into the balance sheet. Inventory days are lowest since COVID. I think it's been that way in the past few quarters. What's allowing you to do this, especially in an inflationary environment? And should we expect to see inventory days continue to moderate, or are you at a comfortable level today?

Thomas Clark

Yes. I think right now, when we look at our inventory, typically, as we get towards the end of the third quarter, we tend to see that inventory continue to reduce as we sell through that seasonal inventory, the outdoor furniture, the HVAC products that are so prevalent in the summer quarters, or Q2 and Q3. And then before we ramp back inventory towards the end of the year, pre-China, pre-Lunar New Year's as we go through it.

When we think about our growth profile, we've also been seeing, again, as we continue to expand into a broader mix of customers, we've seen our mix of products also change where they're supplemented by both our national brand products as well as private brand products and then again, supplemented by drop-ship sell-through as well, which helps improve the days inventory outstanding. So right now, I think, again, we were pleased with our overall inventory turn profile as we head into the end of the quarter, but I would expect us to really focus on availability for our customers and investing in inventory. So it's an area that, again, our liquid balance sheet really allows us to make sure that we have the right product at the right time for our customers, and that's one thing that we will absolutely continue to invest in.

Operator

The next question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti & Company.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Certainly nice to see the very solid Q3 results. So just going back to the third quarter progression, I think, Tex, you mentioned that sales moderated a bit in September. But it sounds like Q4 to date, those have picked up. Any particular reason you think you saw some sales deceleration and then an uptick in October? Anything you can put your finger on as to what prompted that?

Thomas Clark

Yes. And I'll take that first, Anthony. I think, I mean, as we look through the quarter, it was fairly consistent performance throughout the course of July, August, September. In the third quarter, we did exit about 7% growth in September, which then has improved subsequently into the early parts of Q4. Obviously, we're only about 4 weeks into the quarter at this point, but we have seen that accelerate back towards that average daily growth rate that we reported for the quarter.

So a modest increase, but it's been fairly stable. And again, just highlighting that we've had kind of this consistent growth of that 7%, 8%, 9% range for the last 4 quarters. So we've seen that continued trend.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Got you. All right. And then just thinking about longer term as far as your ability to sustain the sales momentum. I know, Anesa, you talked about just gaining deeper share of wallet with your customers. And maybe if you could just speak to that a little bit? I think one interesting, I think, comment you made is that you're making it easier for your customers to do business with. So as we kind of look forward here, what other actions are you taking to drive deeper wallet share?

Anesa Chaibi

Yes. No, great question, Anthony. Thank you for it. We are very much looking at digitizing quite a bit of our connectivity with our customers. And e-procurement is an area where that has been a major focus and priority for this year. And as we have enabled that, customers have the ability to immediately be connected to us, if you will, through their specific portal. And with that said, they're placing orders, and we're capturing that share and penetrating those accounts more so where, in the past, not having that connectivity was an extra step for them to reach out and place an order with us.

So we're kind of bridging that gap, if you will, along with just really honing in on better understanding as we've specialized our go-to-market strategy with our sales team and realigned them, they now have a better understanding of what the industrial customers have or want or need, along with commercial customers or retail or public sector, healthcare, et cetera. And so we're being very intentional in the way that we're going to market, and we're benefiting from that.

And our customers are benefiting from better understanding what we can provide to them in an efficient and effective way. So I believe that's really what's contributing to the momentum and the success. And I think what we've put in as the groundwork in this past year will enable us to sustain that growth going into next year and beyond.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

And then you had very good SG&A expense leverage in Q3. Maybe if you could just kind of walk us through the components of the SG&A year-over-year that you saw? And how do we think about your ability to keep controlling your SG&A effectively going forward?

Thomas Clark

Yes, Anthony, I'll take that one. Thank you for the question. I think the biggest takeaway when we think about SG&A is that we look across our business at our fixed cost base. And when revenue grows and we can accelerate that growth, we're able to deliver those results down to the bottom line and drive operating leverage.

So I think the biggest single benefit to the period was overall hitting that revenue growth, getting up to that $389 million of revenue, kind of 10% plus on a GAAP basis, and we're able to drive that growth and then overall leverage our fixed costs. So that's an area that we look at.

Typically, if you look at our sequential trends within SG&A, you have higher revenue in Q2 and Q3, a little bit better SG&A leverage, and then a little lower sales in Q1 and Q4. And that SG&A ratio tends to increase in those periods. Again, just simply taking that fixed cost basis against a lower sales volume. So overall, again, it is primarily fixed cost leverage, but again, it's absolutely a continued priority in the business to monitor costs and make sure that we're driving efficiencies wherever we can.

Anesa Chaibi

Yes. We're managing our costs everywhere that we can.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session and our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.