Posted February 25, 2011
Interline Brands sales up 15.8 percent
Interline Brands reported fourth quarter sales of $294.8 million, a 15.8% increase compared to sales of $254.6 million in the comparable 2009 period.
"We made significant progress toward our goals in 2010, and exited the year a much stronger company. In particular, we completed a comprehensive refinancing that strengthens our liquidity and financial flexibility, we accelerated certain investments in key growth initiatives, and we acquired a great company in CleanSource that extends our national scale while enhancing our leadership position in the strategically important Janitorial and Sanitation market. In addition, we continued to streamline and improve our supply chain, and we made significant investments in our technology platform, all of which focused on improving the customer experience and positioning Interline as a stronger, broad-line supplier for our customers," said Michael Grebe, chairman and CEO.
Interline's facilities maintenance end-market, which comprised 72% of sales, increased 16.9% during the fourth quarter. The professional contractor end-market, which comprised 16% of sales, increased 14.8% for the quarter. The specialty distributor end-market, which comprised 12% of sales, increased 12.7% for the quarter. Not including the CleanSource acquisition and taking into account the 53-week fiscal year in 2010, average organic daily sales increased 0.2% for the quarter.
"The market environment is stabilizing, and we are encouraged by the modest improvement we are seeing within certain markets. Our growth was primarily driven by a combination of organic growth and our recent acquisitions in the JanSan market, which now represents approximately one-third of our total revenue," said Mr. Grebe.
Gross profit increased $15.9 million, or 16.4%, to $112.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to $96.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2009.
Sales for the year were $1.09 billion, a 2.6% increase compared to sales of $1.06 billion for 2009.
Gross profit increased $20.3 million, or 5.2%, to $414.2 million for the year.
