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Fastenal, a company that sells tools and supplies to factories, reported earnings on Monday. They made more money than last year, but slightly less than Wall Street expected. The stock dropped 5%.
Fastenal made 29 cents per share, while Wall Street wanted 30 cents.
Sales hit $2.1 billion, which matched expectations. Compared to last year when they made 26 cents per share, they ARE doing better - just not quite as well as investors hoped.
Fastenal is like a thermometer for American manufacturing. They sell to thousands of factories and track hundreds of thousands of products. When they do well, it usually means factories are busy.
Right now, U.S. manufacturing is still struggling.
A key industry measure has shown shrinking for 7 months straight. But there are bright spots, especially in companies building AI data centers and making airplanes.
Sales growth is speeding up - from 9% earlier this year to 12% now. Profit margins also improved, and the stock is still up 27% this year.
But investors had really high hopes. The stock is expensive at 37 times next year's expected earnings. When expectations are that high, even small misses hurt.
American factories are slowly recovering, but it's taking longer than investors wanted. Fastenal is doing better, just not fast enough to justify the high price.
