Graybar Electric Co., St. Louis, said its net sales were $4.38 billion in 2009, a decrease of 18.9 percent compared to 2008. The company also posted net income of $37.4 million, down 57.3 percent, from the previous year. “While conditions were some of the most difficult in business history, our performance in 2009 resulted from hard work, a disciplined approach to managing our business and a consistent focus on our long-term strategy,” said Robert Reynolds, Jr., the company's chairman, president and CEO. “We achieved profitability and finished the year with low debt levels and a strong cash position. This prepares us for growth as the economy recovers.”
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Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.