MSC INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY CO. REPORTS FISCAL 2025 FIRST QUARTER RESULTS

FISCAL 2025 Q1 HIGHLIGHTS

• Net sales of $928.5 million decreased 2.7% YoY
• Operating income of $72.3 million, or $74.6 million adjusted to exclude restructuring and other costs¹
• Operating margin of 7.8%, or 8.0% excluding the adjustments described above¹
• Diluted EPS of $0.83 vs. $1.22 in the prior fiscal year quarter
• Adjusted diluted EPS of $0.86 vs. $1.25 in the prior fiscal year quarter¹

MELVILLE, N.Y. and DAVIDSON, N.C., Jan. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- MSC INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY CO. (NYSE: MSM) ("MSC," "MSC Industrial," the "Company," "we," "us," or "our"), a leading North American distributor of a broad range of metalworking and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products and services, today reported financial results for its fiscal 2025 first quarter ended November 30, 2024.

Erik Gershwind, Chief Executive Officer, said, "Our first quarter results reflect solid performance in a challenging operating environment. During the quarter, we returned to growth in the Public Sector and continued expanding our solutions footprint. While this is an encouraging start to the fiscal year, there is room for improvement, which we are addressing through the three pillars of our Mission Critical strategy."

Kristen Actis-Grande, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, added, "Our first quarter performance exceeded our expectations. Average daily sales declined 2.7% year-over-year while gross margin performed as expected. This higher than expected revenue resulted in adjusted operating margin for the first quarter exceeding the high end of our outlook by approximately 50 basis points. We also generated significant free cash flow which, along with our strong balance sheet, provides financial optionality and allows us to return cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases."

Gershwind concluded, "Looking ahead, macro conditions remain soft in the near term as reflected by our December growth rate, which was significantly weighed down by holiday and fiscal calendar timing, particularly during the last week of our fiscal month ending January 4th. However, we remain bullish on our long-term growth trajectory. Our self-help initiatives, such as the execution of our productivity pipeline and Mission Critical strategy, will bolster results as the end-markets with our greatest exposure return to more normalized demand levels."

Full-Year Fiscal 2025 Outlook for Certain Financial Metrics Maintained

• Depreciation and amortization expense of ~$90M-$95M
• Interest and other expense of ~$45M
• Capital expenditures of ~$100M-$110M
• Free cash flow conversion¹ of ~100%
• Tax rate of ~24.5%-25.0%

Conference Call Information
MSC will host a conference call today at 8:30 a.m. EDT to review the Company's fiscal 2025 first quarter results. The call, accompanying slides, and other operational statistics may be accessed at: https://investor.mscdirect.com. The conference call may also be accessed at 1-877-443-5575 (U.S.), 1-855-669-9657 (Canada) or 1-412-902-6618 (international).

An online archive of the broadcast will be available until January 22, 2025. The Company's reporting date for its fiscal 2025 second quarter is scheduled for April 3, 2025.

About MSC Industrial Supply Co. 
MSC Industrial Supply Co. (NYSE:MSM) is a leading North American distributor of a broad range of metalworking and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products and services. We help our customers drive greater productivity, profitability and growth with approximately 2.4 million products, inventory management and other supply chain solutions, and deep expertise from more than 80 years of working with customers across industries. Our experienced team of more than 7,000 associates works with our customers to help drive results for their businesses - from keeping operations running efficiently today to continuously rethinking, retooling and optimizing for a more productive tomorrow. For more information on MSC Industrial, please visit mscdirect.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that MSC expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future, including statements about results of operations and financial condition, expected future results, expected benefits from our investment and strategic plans and other initiatives, and expected future growth and profitability are forward-looking statements. The words "will," "may," "believes," "anticipates," "thinks," "expects," "estimates," "plans," "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. In addition, statements which refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, statements involving a discussion of strategy, plans or intentions, statements about management's assumptions, projections or predictions of future events or market outlook and any other statement other than a statement of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements. The inclusion of any statement in this press release does not constitute an admission by MSC or any other person that the events or circumstances described in such statement are material. In addition, new risks may emerge from time to time and it is not possible for management to predict such risks or to assess the impact of such risks on our business or financial results. Accordingly, future results may differ materially from historical results or from those discussed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, the reader should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the following: general economic conditions in the markets in which we operate; changing customer and product mixes; volatility in commodity, energy and labor prices, and the impact of prolonged periods of low, high or rapid inflation; competition, including the adoption by competitors of aggressive pricing strategies or sales methods; industry consolidation and other changes in the industrial distribution sector; the applicability of laws and regulations relating to our status as a supplier to the U.S. government and public sector; the credit risk of our customers; the risk of customer cancellation or rescheduling of orders; our ability to accurately forecast customer demands; customer cancellations or rescheduling of orders; interruptions in our ability to make deliveries to customers; supply chain disruptions; our ability to attract and retain sales and customer service personnel; the risk of loss of key suppliers or contractors or key brands; changes to trade policies or trade relationships; risks associated with opening or expanding our customer fulfillment centers; our ability to estimate the cost of healthcare claims incurred under our self-insurance plan; interruption of operations at our headquarters or customer fulfillment centers; products liability due to the nature of the products that we sell; impairments of goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangible assets; the impact of climate change; operating and financial restrictions imposed by the terms of our material debt instruments; our ability to access additional liquidity; the significant influence that our principal shareholders will continue to have over our decisions; our ability to execute on our E-commerce strategies and maintain our digital platforms; costs associated with maintaining our information technology ("IT") systems and complying with data privacy laws; our ability to remediate a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting and to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting and our disclosure controls and procedures in the future; disruptions or breaches of our IT systems or violations of data privacy laws, including such disruptions or breaches in connection with our E-commerce channels; risks related to online payment methods and other online transactions; the retention of key management personnel; litigation risk due to the nature of our business; failure to comply with environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations; and our ability to comply with, and the costs associated with, social and environmental responsibility policies. Additional information concerning these and other risks is described under "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in our Annual and Quarterly Reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, respectively, and in the other reports and documents that we file with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. We expressly disclaim any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by applicable law.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement MSC's unaudited selected financial data presented consistent with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States ("GAAP"), the Company discloses certain non-GAAP financial measures, non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP income from operations, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP provision for income taxes, non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share, that exclude share reclassification costs (prior year), restructuring and other costs and tax effects.

These non-GAAP financial measures are not presented in accordance with GAAP or an alternative for GAAP financial measures and may be different from similar non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. The presentation of this additional information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and should only be used to evaluate MSC's results of operations in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP financial measure.

This press release also includes certain forward-looking information that is not presented in accordance with GAAP. The Company believes that a quantitative reconciliation of such forward-looking information to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP cannot be made available without unreasonable efforts because a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures would require the Company to predict the timing and likelihood of potential future events such as restructurings, M&A activity, capital expenditures and other infrequent or unusual gains and losses. Neither the timing or likelihood of these events, nor their probable significance, can be quantified with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Accordingly, a reconciliation of such forward-looking information to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is not provided.

• Results Excluding Share Reclassification Costs (prior year) and Restructuring and Other Costs 

In calculating certain non-GAAP financial measures, we exclude share reclassification costs (prior year), restructuring and other costs and tax effects. Management makes these adjustments to facilitate a review of the Company's operating performance on a comparable basis between periods, for comparing with forecasts and strategic plans, for identifying and analyzing trends in the Company's underlying business and for benchmarking performance externally against competitors. We believe that investors benefit from seeing results from the perspective of management in addition to seeing results presented in accordance with GAAP for the same reasons and purposes for which management uses such non-GAAP financial measures.

SOURCE MSC Industrial Supply Co.