Electrical Wholesaling/Vertical Research Partners 2Q 2024 Survey Offers Insight Into Sluggish Market Conditions

The first half of 2024 provided some growth for distributor respondents to the quarterly Electrical Wholesaling/Vertical Research Partners survey, but executives seemed a bit frustrated with the sluggish business climate. Q2 2024 sales were up +3.4%, up just +0.1% from Q1 2024. That’s below the +5.4% average quarterly growth the EW/VRP survey since 1Q 2020, and sits toward the lower end of EW’s historic annual growth range of +4% to +8%.

In addition to analyzing the survey results from 49 distributor execs that combined capture more than $1 billion in sales, Nick Lipinski,VRP's VP of Equity Research, chats with many of the respondents. They shared their thoughts with him on the impact of a potential Trump victory in November. “From our conversations with distributors and their insights into their own end customers, we get the sense that many expect activity to broadly step up in the event of a second Trump term,” he wrote in the report. “It sounds like there is a significant amount of pent-up investment that could be released in that scenario. A change in posture around oil & gas alone would certainly support activity in the Gulf Coast (including LNG projects held up by the Biden administration) and likely provide a more widespread economic boost from lower energy pricing. Interest rates remain as much if not more in focus, with smaller commercial construction projects clearly slower on rate uncertainty.”