W W Grainger - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. Welcome to the W.W. Grainger Second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Kyle Bland, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Kyle Bland (VP of Investor Relations)

Good morning. Welcome to Grainger's Q2 of 2023 earnings call. With me are D.G. Macpherson, Chairman and CEO, and Dee Merriwether, Senior Vice President and CFO. As a reminder, some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially as a result of the various risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in our SEC filings. Reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures with their corresponding GAAP measures are found in the tables at the end of this presentation and in our Q2 earnings release, both of which are available on our IR website. This morning's call will focus on our second quarter 2023 results, which are consistent on both a reported and adjusted basis for all periods presented. We will also share results related to MonotaRO.

Please remember that MonotaRO is a public company and follows Japanese GAAP, which differs from US GAAP and is reported in our results one month in arrears. As a result, the numbers disclosed will differ somewhat from MonotaRO's public statements. I'll turn it over to D.G.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Kyle. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Today, I'll provide an overview of our second quarter performance. Then pass it to Dee to walk through the financials in detail. As we work our way through 2023, Grainger continues to stay focused on what matters most, providing our customers with the products and services they need through exceptional service. Everything we do is grounded in our Grainger Edge framework, which I'd like to highlight today in the context of our recently released ESG report. I would encourage you all to check out the full report at GraingerESG.com. Grainger has long been a leader in ESG, both for our customers and in our own operations. Internally, we have laid out four near-term ESG focus areas that are important parts of both our culture and operations. Early indications show that we are making meaningful progress.

I'll start with our customer sustainability solutions. In 2022, revenue in High-Touch US business for environmentally preferred products was more than $1 billion and has increased steadily over the last few years. Customer conversations around their environmental footprint have become commonplace. We are well-positioned to help customers in this space. On the right side, you'll see how we are helping our customers achieve their goals by tying sustainability to our product and service offerings. We recently worked with a large container terminal operator that was in search of an opportunity to offset fossil fuel-based energy use, enhance its grid resilience, and reduce cost. To our sustainability services offering, the customer purchased and will install more than 300 solar panels.

These panels will help them avoid approximately 4,000 tons of CO2 emissions over the next 20 years, the equivalent of nine million miles driven by a car. This is just one example. We partner with our customers like this every day, connecting them to our network of service provider partners and helping ensure we can be the go-to partner for everything they need to run safe, reliable, and sustainable operations. Second, supplier diversity. Grainger plays an important role in championing businesses owned by underrepresented groups, including women, minorities, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities through this program. Last year, we spent more than $2 billion on products from our diverse supplier base and continue to make further progress as we expand partnerships in this space. Third, energy and emissions.

Since 2018, we've reduced our global absolute Scope one and Scope two emissions by 26%, nearing our 2030 goal of a 30% reduction. Finally, diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI is a continuous journey. We are proud to have been named one of Fortune's best places to work for women, in addition to being recognized by other organizations for our work to celebrate and support all team members, no matter their ethnicity, orientation, age, disability, or veteran status. Each of these near-term priorities are an important part of our ESG focus and are helping us to scale our actions to make a greater impact for both Grainger and our customers.

Our team will continue to follow the Grainger Edge as we make progress toward our own near-term initiatives and partner with our customers as they work to achieve their ESG goals, together positively impacting the communities where we operate. To review highlights for the quarter, as you can see, we again delivered a strong quarter of performance as we continue to show up well in supporting our customers. As expected, year-over-year growth rates are decelerating, demand remains reasonably steady. For the quarter, we finished with daily sales growth of 9% or 10.1% on a daily constant currency basis. Results again were driven by positive performance in both segments, most notably within the High-Touch solution segment, which outpaced the broader MRO market by approximately 525 basis points in the US.

Total company operating margin was 15.8%, an increase of 190 basis points over the prior year, as improved gross margin performance was driven primarily by continued supply chain efficiencies and lower freight and container costs. Combine this with our strong top-line growth, and we delivered substantial EPS growth, robust operating cash flow, and continued ROIC of over 40%. We also returned a combined $265 million to Grainger shareholders in the quarter through dividends and share repurchases. Alongside these great results, we continue to make progress against our strategic initiatives. In the High-Touch model, we are advancing our proprietary product and customer information management systems that fuel our growth engines and allow us to advance marketing, merchandising, and seller investments in the U.S. The Endless Assortment business is seeing some macro-related demand softening in the U.S.

Overall, the team continues to focus on providing reliable service, while increasing repeat purchase rates with core B2B customers at Zoro and growing with enterprise customers at MonotaRO. Lastly, a few weeks ago, we announced our plans to construct a new 500,000 sq ft distribution center outside of Portland, Oregon, which will support our customers across the Pacific Northwest and is expected to open in 2025. In addition, we are implementing three smaller bulk-style distribution centers in Pennsylvania, Texas, and North Carolina, which are each slated to open over the next few quarters. These investments enable us to keep up with strong customer demand and allow us to extend our industry-leading service capabilities, which deliver a best-in-class experience focused on next-day, complete fulfillment across the United States.

As we remain focused on what matters, I'm pleased with the progress we have made through the first half of 2023. With our strong execution, and as market demand remains reasonably steady, we are raising the midpoint of our full year 2023 revenue and EPS guidance. I'll now pass it over to Dee to go through the details.

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Thanks, D.G. Starting with slide eight, you can see the high-level results for the total company, including strong daily sales growth of 10.1% on a daily constant currency basis. Although year-over-year growth rates decelerated compared to Q1 as inflation cooled and as we lapped a tougher prior year comparison, daily sales dollars remained strong and we are on track to deliver a great year. Total company operating margin was up 190 basis points, as expanded growth margins in both segments were further aided by SG&A leverage in the High-Touch Solutions North American segment. In total, we delivered diluted EPS in the quarter of $9.28, which was up 29% versus the Q2 of 2022.

Diving into segment-level details.

For the Q2, we continued to see strong results within our High-Touch segment, with daily sales up 9.9%, fueled by revenue growth in all geographies. Although year-over-year growth rates have slowed as we lap prior year price inflation, volume growth remains healthy and was generally in line with our expectations for the quarter. In the U.S, we continue to see positive growth in nearly all customer end segments. This does include pockets of softness, including decelerating growth in manufacturing and commercial services. Given our diversified customer base, this is countered by strong growth in other areas such as government and healthcare. In Canada, the economy remains stable, and we are seeing strong results, with Canadian daily sales up about 7% in local days and local currency.

For the segment, GP margin finished the quarter at 41.7%, up 200 basis points versus the prior year. Product availability levels remained high, resulting in fewer packages and shorter distance shipments in the current year as service returned to near pre-pandemic levels. This, when coupled with lower fuel and container rates, is driving significant fuel and supply chain tailwinds in the quarter. Product mix was also favorable, primarily due to improved product availability and a higher mix of margin-accretive products and services. Price-cost spread was slightly negative after adjusting for a non-recurring 40 basis point supplier rebate benefit recognized in the quarter. As expected, the favorability captured in 2022 began to unwind in the Q2 and we expect this to continue for the remainder of the year as we trend towards our long-term neutrality target.

At the operating margin line, we saw improvement of 230 basis points year-over-year as the GP favorability fell to the bottom and revenue growth more than offset continued demand generation investments in headcount and marketing. Overall, this was another strong quarter for the High-Touch North American segment. Looking at market outgrowth on slide 10, we estimate the US MRO market grew between 4.5% and 5%, indicating that we achieved roughly 525 basis points of outgrowth in the quarter. Although this is a sequential slowdown from Q1, we count a very strong prior year quarter, and performance remains above our annual target to outgrow the market by 400-500 basis points through economic cycles. We are well on our way towards achieving that target again in 2023.

Moving to our Endless Assortment segment, sales increased 4.5% or 10.1% on a daily constant currency basis, which adjusts for the impact of the depreciated Japanese yen. Zoro U.S. was up 2.8%, while MonotaRO achieved 12.6% growth in local days, local currency. At a business level, MonotaRO continues to execute well and is driving solid year-over-year revenue growth as they increase registered users and grow the enterprise customers. At Zoro, while slower growth partially reflects a tougher prior year comparison, we're seeing slowing demand across their customer base. Similar to Q1, non-core B, B2C business remained a headwind in the quarter and was down in the mid-teens year-over-year. We have seen a slowdown in Zoro's core B2B business, which makes up a majority of Zoro's revenue.

While we are still growing in the high single digits with these core customers, macro-related factors are impacting demand given Zoro's end market mix, as well as their tilt to smaller-sized businesses, which seem to be struggling more in this environment. We expect both of these headwinds to persist for the remainder of the year. Stepping back, Zoro has delivered great results over the last few years as we've added SKUs to our assortment, increased registered users, and served both core and non-core customers well during the pandemic. As we plan for our next leg of growth, the new local leadership team is focusing their efforts to drive repeat profitable growth with core B2B customers. This should help propel our results through the cycle as we continue to provide a one-stop endless aisle with easy-to-find products and a no-hassle delivery experience for smaller, less complex businesses in the US.

From a profitability perspective, gross margin for the segment expanded 50 basis points versus the prior year due to continued freight efficiencies and strong price realization at MonotaRO, which offset unfavorable product mix at Zoro. Operating margins declined slightly year-over-year to 8.6%, as gross margin favorability was offset by continued investments in marketing and slower than expected top-line growth at Zoro. On slide 12, we continue to see positive results with our key Endless Assortment operating metrics. On the left-hand side, in line with prior quarter growth, total registered users grew nicely, with Zoro and MonotaRO combined up 16% over the prior year. On the right, we also continue to see growth of the Zoro SKU portfolio, which grew by 200,000 SKUs in the second quarter and stands at over 12.2 million in total.

Looking forward to the rest of the year. Given our strong share gain to date and the continued support of demand environment, we are raising the midpoint of our full year 2023 outlook by increasing the lower end of our revenue and earnings ranges. Our revised outlook includes daily sales growth of 8.5%-11% for total company, which is roughly a 75 basis points increase at the midpoint compared to the prior range. High-Touch growth continues to trend slightly higher than expected as we continue to gain share amidst a reasonably steady demand environment. The strength in High-Touch is offsetting lower than expected top line performance with Endless Assortment, primarily due to the softness at Zoro, as previously mentioned.

Altogether, at the total company level, we are confident in our ability to derive growth in the second half and achieve our updated estimates. Looking specifically at July, we've started the third quarter strong and reported month-to-date sales up over 8%, which is roughly 50 basis points higher on a daily constant currency basis. From a margin perspective, both growth, profit margin, and operating margin rate expectations remain unchanged from our previous update. From a seasonality perspective, we expect Q3 margin rates to decline sequentially quarter-over-quarter as the one-time supplier rebate recaptured this quarter falls off and as price cost favorability continues to unwind. Couple this with the continued rapid demand generation investments, and we expect total company operating margins to be lower in the back half of the year.

However, we're still on track to finish 2023 with full year operating margins at an all-time high. The resulting revised EPS range has been raised and stands between $35 and $36.75. Supplemental guidance covering cash flow and share repurchase, which have also been raised, can be found in the appendix of the deck. I look forward to the remainder of 2023, feeling confident in our team's ability to continue to serve our customers well, achieve profitable growth, and drive strong results for our shareholders. I'll turn it back to DG for some closing remarks.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Dee. I am very proud of the ways our team continues to show up and support our customers. Our capabilities and deep understanding of our customers' operation positions us well in the back half of the year and into the future. When we stay focused on the things that matter, helping our customers find the right products and solutions, providing exceptional service, and investing in our supply chain and digital capabilities, we will continue to grow and gain share through any cycle. With that, we will open the line up for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will conduct our question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. We will allow one question and one follow-up question. You may press Star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Tommy Moll with Stephens. Please state your question.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning, thank you for taking my questions.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Good morning.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Dee, I appreciate the insight you gave on Zoro's top line trends through the quarter on the B2C versus the B2B side. You highlighted that even on the B2B side, there was some weakening, though it was still up. I think you said high singles in the quarter. My question is: Is there anything more you can tell us about that B2B deceleration in terms of end market or customer type or anything else you could provide that would be helpful? Thanks.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Tommy, I'll take that. If you think about the vertical industry mix that Zoro serves, some of the fastest growing segments in the Grainger model, the High-Touch model, would be government healthcare, some manufacturing, like aerospace. Zoro does not participate in those really at all. The other trend we're seeing is Zoro is sort of small businesses a lot more than Grainger does, and those customers appear to be a little softer than the larger customers that we serve. Those two factors have a significant impact. Zoro did increase the repeat rate in the quarter. They have some work to do to continue to increase the repeat rate. We're working hard to do that.

The segment mix is a pretty big impact on Zoro right now.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. That's helpful, DG. I also wanted to ask about the distribution center you announced for Oregon. I guess it's a two-part question. One, just anything you can give us in terms of timeline to break ground, cut the ribbon, when most of the CapEx hits? Second part, just a higher level question: Should we view this as any shift in a competitive strategy or emphasis in that part of the country, or it's more you just outgrew the existing roofline you had and needed to expand? Thanks.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. You know, we break ground in a couple of weeks, and like we said, 2025 is when the building will be fully up, so that's the time frame on it. What I would say is that we have been serving the Northwest out of our branches and out of a very small distribution center in Seattle, and we have outgrown that pretty substantially. And we've also been serving it out of Patterson, California. Putting the building up in the Northwest allows us to have more SKUs in market, better service. It also allows us to lower transportation costs because we have much shorter routes from that building to our customers in Seattle, Portland, throughout the Northwest.

It's basically just a normal course of action where we evaluate our footprint and continue to expand where it makes sense.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please state your question.

Ryan Merkel (Partner, Co-Group Head of Industrials)

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. A couple of questions on gross margin. How should we think about gross margins in the second half? Is it around 39? Is that the right metric? Does it dip a little bit in 3Q and then increase sequentially a little bit in 4Q?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Thanks for the question. I think if you kind of focus on the guide and then kind of look at what that implies for us, you know, we're expecting GP to decline slightly, mostly due to the High-Touch impact and what we have been stating pretty much all year that we started beginning of the year related to the unwind of price costs. If you recall, last year, we took price. As we continue to say, price and cost continues to be somewhat lumpy. We can't time those things exactly right. We're gonna see higher costs sequentially as we go through the year and a little slightly lower price. We expect GP to decline a bit in the second half.

Ryan Merkel (Partner, Co-Group Head of Industrials)

Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Just a higher level question on gross margin. I think the guidance you put out there for 2025 was High-Touch, gross margin, about 40%. We're a good bit above that here in 2023. Are you planning on updating that outlook anytime soon, or how should we think about, you know, any new thoughts you might have there?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

You're exactly right. What I would say is, you know, we've done really well, you know, through this period of cost inflation and our ability to price to the market and price well. You know, as I said, I stated last quarter, you know, things still remain to be fluid, and while we're gaining some supply chain efficiencies, as we would expect, as well as diesel fuel and things like that, coming down from some highs, I'm still looking to have a couple more quarters here, and we will definitely take a look at our outlook here in the future and provide an update.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Manthey with Baird. Please state your question.

David Manthey (Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Also on the sustainability of gross margin. In High-Touch, you cited freight and supply chain and mix, and then there were various factors on the Endless Assortment as well. Are these factors, any of those really prone to reversion, or should we expect gross margin, at least within a band, to be reasonably sustainable until we get that shift between High-Touch and Endless Assortment back? It seems like that trend is going counter to what the usual trend would have been, which would be EA to outgrow High-Touch. Can you talk about that a bit?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I do think that's the right way to look, to think about it. you know, we are getting some tailwinds that we have this year, specifically related to supply chain and freight, efficiencies, which, you know, are somewhat significant, and those can flip on us at any time. But right now, we feel like we're in line with where diesel fuel is, as well as we've gotten some benefits from those friction costs that we talked about. DG just mentioned this, talking about transportation costs and extra legs of transportation that we had over the prior years. We're fairly normalized in those areas, you know, getting close to pre-pandemic levels as it relates to that.

We did have in the quarter, you know, some one-time favorability, about 40 basis points related to that one-time rebate. You know, we are seeing, as we kind of talked about price costs in the quarter, turn slightly negative, which we expect to continue. Those are some of the puts and takes as it relates. Again, our target 40-ish, you know, 2025, we're not, we're not changing at this point in time, but I do feel very good about the stability of High-Touch margins in that range.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

The other thing I'd add to that, Dave, is that, you know, the transportation costs can fluctuate. The supply chain efficiencies, we are, for all intents and purposes, at this point, back to where we were before the pandemic. Those should stay, right? Those won't reverse. That was all pandemic-driven, in terms of all the inefficiencies we had in the system. That should stay, those pieces of it should stay stable.

David Manthey (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, thank you. You mentioned price as a driver for High-Touch, but then you've been saying you're in this negative price-cost position. Dee, you had mentioned that it's a little tricky to line things up exactly from a timing standpoint. What opportunities do you have to take actions over the next six months, say, to reestablish price-cost neutrality, if you plan to do that at all?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Again, the U.S. team, you know, works really hard to remain price competitive. That's our other tenet that, you know, gets us to price cost neutrality, and are always looking for opportunities to price and optimize price with our customers over time. I would say that's the biggest opportunity we have related to price in the future is ensuring that we're optimizing and each of our customer segments have the appropriate price for the goods and services that we are providing them. Remaining price cost competitive is a key tenet here that really buoys our growth, our volume growth over the cycle.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Snyder with UBS. Please state your question.

Chris Snyder (Executive Director)

Thank you. I also wanted to ask on price costs. The prepared remarks, you know, said that price cost was negative in the quarter, at least on a year-on-year basis. You also said that price cost favorability will unwind in the back half of the year, if I heard that right. They kind of sound, like, conflicting a little bit. I don't know if it's a year-on-year versus sequential thing, but could you just maybe help me think through that? Thank you.

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Yeah. Price cost in this quarter, when you adjust for the one-time supplier rebate was slightly negative. As we started the year, we provided an outlook that as the year continues to flow that we would become price cost negative because we had favorable price last year, and cost did not come in as we had expected, because we had the opportunity to continue to work with our sub-supply base on the cost inflation, which is now coming this year. That is why price costs will become more negative as we go into the second half of this year.

Chris Snyder (Executive Director)

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. I guess maybe just kind of following up on the gross margin topic. Is there any way to think about, you know, maybe that level of price cost unwind into the back half of the year? Also on the 40 basis point supplier rebate, any just more color on that? You know, usually that's something that we think of coming in the fourth quarter. Thank you.

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

I wouldn't over pivot on the, on the one-time adjustment. It was related to a prior period. It's not something that we would expect to continue. I will say the other thing I'd add, if you look at our price cost over a, over a longer period, maybe a two-year period, we do not expect it to be negative. That's how we end up, you know, hitting our target of price cost neutrality over time. I would not read into that, you know, some of the impact that we're gonna have in the second half of this year are expected to continue any longer than that period.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. Please state your question.

Christopher Glynn (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. I had a question on Endless Assortment. You know, curious how you consider the thought that perhaps the fundamental kind of algorithm for 16%-18% growth to 25, you know, temporary lull or maybe more practical to reconsider long term, perhaps high single digits, low double digits. I know, you know, Zoro's rationalizing some of the customer mix, and MonotaRO has some different strategies around customer demographics that have been a bit in flux as well. Curious how to what might be a practical update on that metric?

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

You know, I appreciate the question, Chris. I think similar to sort of gross margin outlook, we want to see probably a few more quarters of performance to understand how this plays out. The MonotaRO business in Japan has continued to perform pretty well, and not obvious that they're gonna be in a different place than they have historically going forward at this point. We do think that some of Zoro's issues are fairly temporary, as they unwind some consumer business and some other B2B business that changes that are going on. Not really ready to talk about sort of changing the outlook in the future, but certainly we will consider that as the year goes on.

Christopher Glynn (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Okay, great. Then, I was just curious on the SG&A spend rate in the second quarter, is that a kind of good benchmark to think about stability in that kind of dollar rate range for the second half?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I think that, you know, that's a good thing to consider.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jacob Levinson with Melius Research. Please state your question.

Jacob Levinson (Director)

Good morning, DG, Dee.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Good morning.

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Good morning.

Jacob Levinson (Director)

If you'll humor one more price-related question, and then we can move on. Just high level, trying to get a sense of whether your suppliers are talking about or have already put through mid-year price increases, or if they're talking about further price increases in the latter half of the year, or whether with inflation coming down, we're really just past that cycle, if you will?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, we're working with our supply base to get back to, you know, some of our normal inflation cadence, you know, that, you know, was not so normal during the pandemic. As it relates to this year, I think we have a good handle on what we believe our cost inflation will be, and we've embedded that in our guide. Of course, you know, later in the year, we will start working with them on what 2024 looks like.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

We talked about this at the beginning of the year, Jake. I think that almost all of the inflation we're going to see this year is wrapped from last year. We're seeing puts and takes, ups and downs with suppliers, but in general, there's just not a lot of additional inflation coming in from our suppliers.

Jacob Levinson (Director)

Okay, that makes sense. Just switching gears to inventories for a second. I know your inventory has loose in $ terms, seemed to have stabilized here. I'm sure there's some inflation math in there, but how are you thinking about stocking levels going forward? Or maybe said differently, is there, you know, is there a new normal post the sort of supply chain disruptions and COVID issues that we've seen in the last couple of years, that's maybe higher than it was back in 2019 or so?

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I mean, you know, what I would say is, we generally have two premises when we think about inventory levels. The first one is to stock to service levels. Based on the velocity of items, we set targets for the service we wanna provide on those items that is competitively advantaged, and we basically stock to that. The other is we look at wasteful inventory, inventory that isn't productive, and make sure to manage that down. I don't think we're necessarily in a new world. We still have some elongated supplier lead times now. Those have mostly come down, and as those continue to come down, I suspect we can be mostly back to where we were historically from an inventory perspective to revenue.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Baumann with J.P. Morgan. Please state your question.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Just, I got one more on price. Sorry about that. Is there an update to how you think you're gonna finish the year on, on price at High-Touch? Just curious if you're seeing any changes in, like, demand elasticity with respect to, I think you make changes with your web pricing ahead of like, you know, making changes in the CRP. Just curious if you're seeing any changes to elasticity related to moves you're making there. Then on Zoro, within the price discussion, has that been holding up as well as it has in the High-Touch segment?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

I'll, I'll start. Yeah, you know, we made some pricing changes earlier in the year. We don't see in the US a need to make any significant pricing adjustments for the balance of the year, but the pricing team is always in the market, looking at price and making sure that we are competitively priced. You know, the Zoro business, I would say, from a gross margin perspective, operates a little bit differently and are targeting a different customer segment, as DG alluded to.

They also, you know, have their own pricing algorithm and pricing team that is focused on remaining competitive with the customers that they are serving and have taken action to price their products in line with the inflation that's been passed on to them.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

The price for the year there at High-Touch?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Pardon me?

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Price at High-Touch for the year. Do you have an update on that? That was part of the question.

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

Oh, sorry, I missed that. You know, it still remains around a 4%-5%. That hasn't changed.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

My follow-up is on inventory. Again, I guess I'm just curious what drove the better than expected cash guide, you know, the upgrade to the guidance. Was it you're planning to hold a little bit less inventory than you previously planned, or is there something else?

Dee Merriwether (SVP and CFO)

No, really, the operating cash outlook is really due to the top line improvement, at High-Touch that's really flowed through. As a result of that, we took the opportunity to update the operating cash flow guide, about $75 million at the midpoint.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Okay, thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Kyle Bland (VP of Investor Relations)

Deane Dray, your line is open. Please unmute yourself.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

We think it's probably Deane Dray, since we know who that is.

Kyle Bland (VP of Investor Relations)

Sorry, Deane Dray. Your line is open. Please go ahead, RBC Capital Markets. Okay, we will move on.

Operator (participant)

That's the final question for today. I'll now turn the floor over to D.G. Macpherson for closing remarks. Thank you.

D.G. Macpherson (Chairman and CEO)

All right, thanks for joining the call today. You know, what I would say is, the year is playing out pretty much as we expected. We talked a lot about price cost. It's actually played out almost exactly like we expected at the beginning of the year. There are really no surprises generally in the market at this point. We continue to feel good about our performance, our share gain, our profitability, and feel like we're well positioned to have a really strong second half relative to, you know, the market. We're gonna continue to work on that. And just appreciate you being on the call, and I look forward to seeing you and talking to you down the line. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you all for your participation.