- Fastenal (FAST) Down 2.9% Since Last Earnings Report: Can It Rebound?
May 13, 2026
A month has gone by since the last earnings report for Fastenal (FAST). Shares have lost about 2.9% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500.
Will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Fastenal due for a breakout? Well, first let's take a quick look at its most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the recent catalysts for Fastenal Company before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late.
Fastenal Q1 Earnings Meet Estimates, Sales Beat
Fastenal Company reported first-quarter 2026 results in which earnings met the Zacks Consensus Estimate, while revenues modestly surpassed expectations. Both metrics increased on a year-over-year basis.
Results were supported by stronger daily sales, driven by customer contract signings and broad-based demand across key end markets, along with favorable contributions from product pricing and foreign exchange.
FAST’s Q1 Revenues & Earnings Performance
Fastenal reported earnings per share (EPS) of 30 cents, in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate, but up 13.6% year over year from 26 cents in the prior-year quarter. Net income increased 13.8% year over year to $339.8 million.
Net sales rose 12.4% year over year to $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, modestly surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.04%, with both periods reflecting 63 business days. Average daily sales increased to $34.9 million from $31.1 million. Management attributed the performance to improved customer contract signings since the first quarter of 2024, alongside a slight improvement in industrial production during the quarter. Pricing was a notable contributor. Product pricing added roughly 350 bps (basis points) to net sales growth in the period, while foreign exchange provided a benefit of about 60 bps.
Margin Trends: Mixed but Stable
Gross profit increased 11.2% year over year to $982.9 million, but gross margin declined 50 bps to 44.6% from 45.1%. Management cited unfavorable price/cost of about 50 basis points as the primary driver, with additional headwinds from transportation and certain customer rebates. Customer mix also remained a structural pressure as growth skewed toward larger customers with lower gross margins. Selling, general, and administrative expenses were 24.3% of net sales, down from 25% a year ago, supported by productivity-driven leverage, partially offset by higher bonuses and commissions tied to improved business activity. Operating income rose 13.6% year over year to $447.6 million, and operating margin increased to 20.3% from 20.1%.
Story Continues
Segment & Customer Highlights
Fastenal reported solid performance across product categories, with direct materials slightly outpacing indirect materials, supported by strength in manufacturing customers and continued benefits from the fastener expansion project.
Direct materials, which include fasteners, cutting tools and other production-related items, recorded daily sales growth of 13.1% year over year and accounted for 38.8% of net sales, up from 38.7% in the year-ago quarter. Growth was led by direct fasteners and hardware, which rose 13.8% year over year and represented 21% of sales.
Indirect materials, comprising safety supplies and other MRO-related items, posted daily sales growth of 12.4% and made up 61.1% of net sales, slightly lower than last year.
Fastenal’s manufacturing exposure remained the primary driver. Heavy manufacturing daily sales grew 14.1% year over year and represented 44% of total sales in the first quarter, while other manufacturing grew 9.9% and made up 32.2%. Combined manufacturing end markets accounted for 76.2% of sales during the period.
Outside manufacturing, performance also held up. Non-residential construction daily sales rose 17.2% year over year and represented 8.2% of sales, while other end markets rose 11.3% and contributed 15.6% of the revenue mix.
FAST’s technology-enabled channels continued to scale. Digital Footprint sales rose to $1.37 billion in the quarter, up from $1.21 billion a year ago, and represented 61.5% of total sales. FMI sales increased to $1 billion and accounted for 44.9% of sales, with FASTStock sales of $279.8 million and FASTBin/FASTVend sales of $721.6 million. eBusiness sales were $648.8 million and represented 29.1% of sales.
Balance Sheet & Capital Allocation
FAST ended the first quarter of 2026 with $308.6 million in cash and cash equivalents, up from $276.8 million at the end of 2025. Long-term debt stood at $100 million, unchanged from the prior-year period. Total liquidity remained solid, supported by strong operating cash flow of $378.4 million in the quarter, up 44.3% from the first quarter of 2025 and representing 111.4% of net income compared with 87.8% in the prior-year period. Shareholder returns remained consistent. The company returned $295.7 million through dividends of $275.6 million and share repurchases of $20.1 million during the first quarter.
FAST’s Outlook & Commentary
For 2026, the company expects investment in property and equipment, net of proceeds from sales, to increase year over year. This anticipated growth is driven by higher spending to replace its Atlanta hub facility and enhance picking capacity and efficiency across the hub network, increased investment in trucking and elevated IT spending as previously delayed projects continue into 2026.
How Have Estimates Been Moving Since Then?
It turns out, estimates revision flatlined during the past month.
VGM Scores
Currently, Fastenal has a strong Growth Score of A, though it is lagging a lot on the Momentum Score front with a C. Charting a somewhat similar path, the stock was allocated a grade of D on the value side, putting it in the bottom 40% for this investment strategy.
Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of C. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in.
Outlook
Fastenal has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). We expect an in-line return from the stock in the next few months.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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- Fastenal (FAST) Down 2.9% Since Last Earnings Report: Can It Rebound?
May 13, 2026 · zacks.com
Fastenal (FAST) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock?
- Is FAST Overvalued? DCF Says Worth $19
May 13, 2026 · gurufocus.com
On May 13, 2026, we present a discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis for Fastenal Co (FAST), a company that has shown a price performance of +10.6% over the past y
- AI Mania Makes Old-School Industrials Behave Like Chip Stocks
May 12, 2026
(Bloomberg) -- Optimism surrounding the potential for industrial companies to profit from the artificial intelligence boom has fueled record-setting momentum in the sector. Now worries are mounting that the group’s link to AI may be getting too tight.
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A gauge of 45-day correlation between the S&P 500 Industrials Sector, home to stocks like Deere & Co. and Fastenal Co., and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index is sitting at 0.75, near the highest level since June. A reading of 1 means the securities move in lockstep.
Many industrial companies provide the essential physical infrastructure needed to build and operate data centers, making them a second-derivative play for artificial intelligence. That makes the sector, already sensitive to swings in the broader economic cycle, also susceptible to risks of AI demand slowing.
“If AI is the single engine that’s driving both the stock market and the economy, any types of sputtering will end up being a bigger issue for everything,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading Institutional Services. “Any weakness that emerges among a key player here should have ramifications throughout everything.”
The near-tandem moves were on display on Monday, when chipmakers like Qualcomm Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. helped lift the S&P 500 Index and industrial firms like power-equipment provider Vertiv Holdings Co. were among the top performers in the benchmark. The dynamic also sets up a test for both tech and industrial stocks when heavyweight Nvidia Corp. reports results next week.
Right now, there are 15 non-tech companies with a combined market capitalization of $2 trillion that are “moving as a derivative of AI capex,” Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research LLC, wrote in a May 7 note to clients. “If the AI cycle ever cools off, the wealth-effect drag on consumption is not going to be confined to the Mag 7.”
Industrials including Vertiv, Eaton Corp., Caterpillar Inc. and even engine maker Cummins Inc. are high on the list. The stocks are more than 60% correlated to the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, data compiled by Renaissance Macro show.
“These are not tech stocks. They trade like semis because their order books have become AI capex order books,” Dutta said, noting that Caterpillar is selling backup generators to data centers, while Vertiv provides cooling and power management equipment.
Story Continues
Indeed, the AI spending boom has reshaped the way that some of the sector’s most-storied names trade. Caterpillar, famous for its yellow backhoes and bulldozers, has surged more than 170% in the past 12 months. Sales to data centers have fueled a 250% rally in Vertiv and a 150% advance in GE Vernova Inc. over the past year.
“These are the picks and shovels and infrastructure behind the AI buildout,” said Emily Roland, co-chief investment strategist at Manulife John Hancock. She said that while the sector has gotten expensive, the “magnitude of the earnings beats” in industrials is outpacing other groups. At the outset of earnings season, she noted analysts had expected to see average earnings growth of 3%, whereas the sector has shown 20%.
Yey the risk is that any material slowdown in AI spending or a simple reversal in momentum in AI stocks will likely spill over into industrials, fueling swings in the sector that’s trading at a valuation premium to the broader S&P 500 that’s been exceeded just briefly this century. Shares of Vertiv and GE Vernova fell 5.4% and 2.8%, respectively, in late April after a report that OpenAI had missed internal targets for revenue and new users.
Philip Straehl, chief investment officer at Morningstar Wealth, wrote on May 7 that the US equity market “has increasingly become a concentrated bet on AI” as earnings growth is tied to AI infrastructure spending. He warned, however, that AI spending is at this point “just a forecast” and some of those spending plans could be trimmed.
“History offers many examples — from railroads to fiber-optic networks — where companies built capacity based on optimistic projections around future adoption,” Straehl said, adding that in those cases, the main beneficiaries were consumers, not investors.
To be sure, industrial stocks are trading in-line with some of their historic norms. After a spike in February helped the S&P 500 Industrials Sector outperform the broader S&P 500 by two standard deviations, the group is now directly in the middle of an expected 100-day breather, data DataTrek Research shows.
Still, the firm does see concentrated outperformance in the stocks participating in the AI buildout. “Industrials have recently enjoyed a renaissance in investor interest as a derivative AI trade, but that has left many leadership names with tech-like valuations but still capital-intensive, manufacturing oriented business models.”
The group has also gotten expensive: For the first time since 2021, industrials in the S&P 500 are trading at a higher forward price-to-earnings multiple than technology companies.
Those lofty valuations further set the group up for a potentially rough landing because the services they are offering are more commoditized than in the tech space, O’Rourke said.
“The industrial names have a larger risk” he said.
--With assistance from Matthew Griffin.
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- LZ vs. FAST: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?
May 7, 2026
Investors with an interest in Industrial Services stocks have likely encountered both LegalZoom (LZ) and Fastenal (FAST). But which of these two stocks is more attractive to value investors? We'll need to take a closer look to find out.
Everyone has their own methods for finding great value opportunities, but our model includes pairing an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system with a strong Zacks Rank. The proven Zacks Rank puts an emphasis on earnings estimates and estimate revisions, while our Style Scores work to identify stocks with specific traits.
LegalZoom and Fastenal are sporting Zacks Ranks of #2 (Buy) and #3 (Hold), respectively, right now. The Zacks Rank favors stocks that have recently seen positive revisions to their earnings estimates, so investors should rest assured that LZ has an improving earnings outlook. But this is just one factor that value investors are interested in.
Value investors also try to analyze a wide range of traditional figures and metrics to help determine whether a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.
Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.
LZ currently has a forward P/E ratio of 8.37, while FAST has a forward P/E of 36.28. We also note that LZ has a PEG ratio of 0.49. This popular figure is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also considers a company's expected EPS growth rate. FAST currently has a PEG ratio of 2.85.
Another notable valuation metric for LZ is its P/B ratio of 6.48. The P/B is a method of comparing a stock's market value to its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. By comparison, FAST has a P/B of 12.87.
Based on these metrics and many more, LZ holds a Value grade of A, while FAST has a Value grade of D.
LZ stands above FAST thanks to its solid earnings outlook, and based on these valuation figures, we also feel that LZ is the superior value option right now.
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LegalZoom.com, Inc. (LZ) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Fastenal Company (FAST) : Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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- LZ vs. FAST: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?
May 7, 2026 · zacks.com
Investors with an interest in Industrial Services stocks have likely encountered both LegalZoom (LZ) and Fastenal (FAST). But which of these two stocks is more attractive to value investors?
- Fastenal (FAST): The Quiet Compounder Nobody Talks About Is a Buy-and-Hold-Forever Stock
May 7, 2026
Quick Read
Fastenal (FAST) — company embeds inventory infrastructure inside customer factories, creating durable, sticky relationships. Fastenal has paid uninterrupted quarterly dividends for 27+ years and returned $1 billion to shareholders in 2025. The company grew revenue 8.67% to $8.2 billion in 2025 despite sluggish industrial production backdrop. The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Fastenal wasn't one of them. Get them here FREE.
Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST) is a stock built to be owned for decades, because it sells the boring, essential consumables that keep American industry running, and it has quietly compounded capital through every cycle without ever asking for attention. The case for putting it in a retirement portfolio and leaving it alone rests on three pillars: a business that is structurally embedded inside its customers, an income stream backed by 27+ years of uninterrupted quarterly payments, and a track record of growing through recessions rather than being broken by them.
Durability: Embedded Inside Customer Operations
Fastenal embeds inventory infrastructure inside the customer's factory. At the close of fiscal 2025, the company had 136,638 FMI vending devices physically deployed at customer sites, and contract customers represented 73.8% of sales, growing 12.9% on a daily sales rate basis. Once a Fastenal vending machine is bolted to a plant wall and tied into a customer's procurement system, the switching cost is real. That is why Digital Footprint sales reached $1.277 billion in Q4 2025, up 11.1%, and why returns on capital remain elevated, with return on equity at 33.8% and return on assets at 21.2%. The balance sheet is similarly conservative: $3.94 billion in equity against $1.11 billion in total liabilities.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Fastenal wasn't one of them.Get them here FREE.
Income: A Quiet Stream On Top of Compounding
The dividend is the part that makes this a retirement holding rather than just a quality industrial. The current yield sits at 2.01%, modest in isolation, but the company returned $1,004.2 million to shareholders in 2025, equal to 79.8% of net income. Quarterly checks have arrived without fail since at least 1999, through the dot-com bust, the financial crisis, and the pandemic. For an investor in their 50s or 60s, that is the kind of payment record that supports planning around steady cash flow.
Cycle Survival: Growth Through Sluggish Backdrops
Fastenal does not need a booming economy to advance. Full-year 2025 revenue rose 8.67% to $8.20 billion and net income climbed 9.37% to $1.258 billion, despite what management itself called a sluggish industrial production backdrop. BEA data confirms manufacturing value added grew only 0.3% in Q4 2025, yet wholesale trade, Fastenal's distribution channel, expanded 2.8%. The stock carries a beta of 0.744, and ten-year price performance shows a 399.83% gain through May 6, 2026.
Story Continues
Where It Underperforms, and Why It Doesn't Matter
In sharp industrial recessions, Fastenal's growth slows and gross margin compresses. Q4 2025 gross margin contracted 50 basis points to 44.3% on inventory cost timing, supplier rebate headwinds, and customer mix shift toward larger, lower-margin accounts. In a true downturn, expect flat-to-down revenue for several quarters and a stalled stock. That scenario does not break the forever thesis. The contract base does not unwind in a recession, the vending machines stay installed, and the dividend continues. Cycles end. The embedded relationships do not.
The thesis rests on durability of the embedded customer relationships, not on near-term price action.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks
This analyst's 2025 picks are up 106% on average. He just named his top 10 stocks to buy in 2026. Get them here FREE.
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- Fastenal (FAST): The Quiet Compounder Nobody Talks About Is a Buy-and-Hold-Forever Stock
May 6, 2026 · 247wallst.com
Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST | FAST Price Prediction) is a stock built to be owned for decades, because it sells the boring, essential consumables that keep American industry running, and it has quietly compounded capital through every cycle without ever asking for attention.
- Portfolio Manager Reveals How Selling a 19-Bagger Too Early Changed His Investment Philosophy Forever
May 6, 2026
Quick Read
Matt Ancrum’s field research led to a correct call to sell Fastenal (FAST) before a 55% sell-off. However, they ended up missing an eventual 19-fold gain from the stock’s lowest point. Holding quality businesses through the storm is typically one of the investing industry’s best-kept secrets for building wealth. The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Fastenal wasn't one of them. Get them here FREE.
On a recent episode of The Compound and Friends hosted by Josh Brown, former Janus analyst Matt Ancrum told a story about how he'd made the correct call that Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST) stock would sell off, but by selling the position, the firm missed out on the stock's eventual 19x move. This was an epiphany moment that showed the importance of holding for the long term.
The Trade That Looked Genius
On the podcast, the guests told the story about how back in the day, Fastenal, a Minnesota-based industrial distributor that sells nuts, bolts, and other fasteners, accounted for about 8% of the firm's portfolio. Field research with regional VPs flagged that Fastenal would miss its upcoming earnings, so they sold the stock. Looking back, Ancrum said, "I looked like a genius," because Fastenal went on to drop 55% while the broader market dropped 15%.
Then came the gut punch. From that low point of roughly $0.65 split-adjusted, Fastenal rose 19-fold while the S&P 500 roughly quadrupled over the same time period. Clients praised the firm for being "saved" by the sell call, but they ended up missing a generational compounder.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Fastenal wasn't one of them.Get them here FREE.
Why Fastenal Came Back
Fastenal has a great business model because its industrial products typically account for less than 3% of total project costs, yet missing a single fastener can stop entire construction crews. Fastenal has pricing power because customers pay for reliable supply rather than saving pennies to find the cheapest products themselves.
Fastenal is still a well-run business today. In Q4 2025, the business posted revenue of $2.027 billion, up 11.1% year over year, with EPS of $0.26. Contract customers reached 73.8% of sales, and the FMI device installed base grew to 136,638 MEUs.
The Hero's Journey of 100-Baggers
Ancrum's story fits a pattern. Brown framed the universal challenge as "the willingness to endure 50% drawdowns" and described the pattern of 100-baggers as "the hero's journey," where companies often have to "come back from the dead" to deliver their biggest gains. Neeraj Khemlani added that over the life of a 100-bagger, "nearly every single one of them experiences an existential event."
Story Continues
The data shows that most 100-bagger stocks suffer maximum drawdowns of around 70%. The journey is brutal by design.
The Lesson for Finding 100-Bagger Stocks
For investors building retirement portfolios, the takeaway is that the willingness to do nothing can often be one of the most important factors for compounding wealth.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks
This analyst's 2025 picks are up 106% on average. He just named his top 10 stocks to buy in 2026. Get them here FREE.
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- Portfolio Manager Reveals How Selling a 19-Bagger Too Early Changed His Investment Philosophy Forever
May 6, 2026 · 247wallst.com
On a recent episode of The Compound and Friends hosted by Josh Brown, former Janus analyst Matt Ancrum told a story about how he'd made the correct call that Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST | FAST Price Prediction) stock would sell off, but by selling the position, the firm missed out on the stock's eventual 19x move.
