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Acquisitions Top $1 Billion in Sales in EW’s 2018 Top 200 Distributors Listing
While preparing the annual Top 200 listing of the largest electrical distributors in North America for next month’s issue of Electrical Wholesaling, one word summarized the reaction of EM’s editors to the changes in this year’s ranking: Yikes!
The surprise is not so much that the pace of acquisitions in the electrical market has quickened once again, or even that the Top 200 distributors continue to command an increasing share of industry sales (at least $63 billion according to our analysis).
What really gave us pause was the amount of industry sales that has changed hands over the past two years. We estimate that $1.3 billion in industry sales is accounted for by the 2017-2018 acquisitions of Top 200 distributors, including City Electric Co., Syracuse, NY; Electrical Equipment & Engineering (3E), Windsor Heights, IA; Hite Co., Altoona, PA; Kriz-Davis Co., Grand Island, NE; Reynolds Co., Dallas, TX; Tri State Supply Co., Washington, PA; Upchurch Electrical Supply Co., Fayetteville, AR; and Womack Electric Supply, Danville, VA.
Despite this acquisition activity and the share of industry sales the Top 200 distributors account for, the electrical wholesaling market is still pretty decentralized compared to some other distribution-based industries, like pharmaceuticals, electronics and auto parts, where a handful of large players account for the majority sales.
The chart on page 2 lists the 50 largest distributors in EW’s 2018 Top 200 ranking. While there are no big surprises in the companies ranked in this list, we continue to be amazed at how many electrical distributors top $100 million in annual sales, which by any measure is a good-sized business. It looks like at least 78 out of the 200 companies in this year’s ranking hit that milestone with their 2017 sales.