Grainger Earnings: We’re Still Modeling in Near-Term Resilience, Despite Some End Markets Cooling

Grainger’s second-quarter results led us to increase our fair value estimate to $476 from $473 previously. The increase was driven by slight tweaks to our near-term sales and margin forecast, in addition to the time value of money since our last update. The company’s high-touch business continues to perform well, outgrowing the U.S. maintenance, repair, and operations market by 525 basis points in the quarter. Recall, management’s outperformance target is 400-500 basis points.