Bruce Murray W. W. Grainger Inc GWW-N BUY ON WEAKNESS Mar 19, 2024

Likes logistics because you don’t have to manufacture anything but you can make a lot of money on maintenance and service. This is a distributor of all kinds of things such as work boots, hardhats, nuts and bolts for elevators, anything to do with industry, maintenance and construction. Growing 12%-15% a year. Dividend has been growing at about 20%. Now getting more of a revenue base outside of the US. 3.2% dividend.

(A Top Pick September 14/12. 28.73%.) He is still buying more. This company is pretty much a distributor of all the parts you would ever want in infrastructure, maintenance, construction such as hardhats, work boots, etc. Have grown the dividend at a 12% clip every year for 46 years.

(A Top Pick Sept 14/12. Up 31.95%.) Feels this is a little over extended now. Historically P/E ratios in this industry have topped around 14 and this is trading around 17-18 times. Buy this on weakness.

Digitized their large catalogues of manufacturing parts. They focus on working capital. It is a very large scale business. There is some energy overhang so the share price has not done anything in two years.

A distributor of parts for the construction industry. The stock hit a high in 2016, and then began to fall because of declining sales. This happened for about 6 quarters because of Amazon (AMZN-Q). It has recovered because they finally got some quarterly sales growth, because of cost cutting. He sold his holdings at around $200. The business model is under pressure. PE is roughly 18X earnings, a little below the market, but the discount is because of the type of business they are in.

Trades at 21x and has 80% US revenue exposure. The last 35 months it has delivered double-digit revenue growth. An industrial.

Strong balance sheet and built momentum in the past year.

Maintenance and repair business for industrial machines. Very defensive business with constant demand for product. Lots of profitable M&A that has helped with on-shoring of American manufacturing. Good for long term investors. 

With DeepSeek, the whole sector got hit really hard, taking a while to snap back. Metrics in underlying business still strong.