
Industrial supplies company MSC Industrial Direct (NYSE: MSM) will be reporting earnings this Thursday morning. Here’s what to expect.
MSC Industrial beat analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $1.05 billion, up 7.8% year on year. It was a very strong quarter for the company, with a beat of analysts’ EPS estimates.
Is MSC Industrial a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.
This quarter, the market is expecting MSC Industrial’s revenue to grow 9.7% year on year, improving from the 2.7% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year.

Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business will stay the course heading into earnings. MSC Industrial has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates multiple times over the last two years.
Looking at MSC Industrial’s peers in the industrial distributors segment, some have already reported their Q3 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Fastenal delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 15.5%, beating analysts’ expectations by 1%, and Richardson Electronics reported revenues up 18.9%, topping estimates by 10.1%. Fastenal traded down 2% following the results while Richardson Electronics’s stock price was unchanged.
Read our full analysis of Fastenal’s results here and Richardson Electronics’s results here.
Over the past year, investors have repeatedly shifted their focus from one macro narrative to another (AI disruption and AI capex spending to geopolitics, interest rates, and the broader health of the economy). While some of the industrial distributors stocks have shown solid performance in this choppy environment, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 5.1% on average over the last month. MSC Industrial is up 6.5% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $134.25 (compared to the current share price of $129.56).
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