What Happened?
Shares of industrial and commercial distributor Global Industrial (NYSE:GIC) jumped 14.8% in the afternoon session after the company reported impressive first quarter 2025 results, which blew past analysts' revenue, EPS, and EBITDA expectations. However, guidance remains uncertain, as management didn't provide explicit forward-looking revenue or EPS figures and flagged recent tariff disruptions as a growing risk across the supply chain. Zooming out, we think this was a good quarter with some key areas of upside.
The shares closed the day at $25.62, up 15.7% from previous close.
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What The Market Is Telling Us
Global Industrial’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 5 moves greater than 5% over the last year. Moves this big are rare for Global Industrial and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.
The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 6 months ago when the stock dropped 22.9% on the news that the company reported underwhelming third-quarter earnings, with its revenue, EBITDA, and EPS falling short of Wall Street's estimates. Management added, "Third quarter results reflect a weak demand environment and continued softness in our core small and medium business customer base..." Overall, this was a weaker quarter.
Global Industrial is up 1.8% since the beginning of the year, but at $24.40 per share, it is still trading 36.6% below its 52-week high of $38.51 from April 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Global Industrial’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,229.
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