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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
December 2022 #14281 Page #106
Through Buying, Selling, and Closing Yards, Dealers are Revealing Their Strategies Craig Webb President, Webb Analytics
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BC Supply is going to Canada. Lowe’s is leaving it. SRS Distribution continues to diversify. Builders FirstSource is right-sizing its company in advance of America’s expected home-building slump. And US LBM is still hungry for truss plants.
These are among some of the strategic moves that construction supply companies have made over the past month. In all, Webb Analytics’ latest count finds 378 locations changing hands so far this year, along with 170 greenfield openings and 50 closures. Those numbers trail the number of yards (579) in deals at this point in 2021 but exceed the number of greenfield openings (125). There have been 128 purchase transactions so far this year, not far from the 136 by mid-November 2021. BFS President and CEO David Flitman revealed to analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call Nov. 8 that BFS had already closed or was in the process of closing 17 facilities. He didn’t say then which they were, but Webb Analytics has learned the 17 include: •
Home centers in Norwood, Needham, and Canton, MA, that were part of BFS’ acquisition of National Lumber earlier this year.
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One of two lumber facilities in Columbia, SC.
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Lumber yards in the relatively small towns of Cokato, MN (population 2,800, located 50 miles west of Minneapolis), and Caro, MI (population 4,350, located 100 miles north of Detroit).
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A lumberyard in Flagstaff, AZ.
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An installed sales facility in Perris, CA.
The remaining nine locations are still in the process of being closed and thus remain unidentified, a company spokesperson told Webb Analytics. “I just want to be clear, we are not taking out manufacturing capacity,” Flitman told analysts. “This is more consolidation, primarily in some of the smaller markets where we may have redundant assets that, given the last two years and the strength of the market, we have not needed to shut those facilities down. In fact, we’ve needed all that capacity that we’ve had, but times are different now.”
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