Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) released its monthly TRENDS report showing average sales for HARDI distributor members increased by 19.4% in January 2018.

The average annualized growth for the 12 months through January 2018 is 6.9%.

“January and February are the two least important revenue producing months of the year for HARDI distributors,” HARDI Market Research and Benchmarking Analyst Brian Loftus said. “January sales can be very volatile because of weather disruptions. The results this January got a big boost from the colder than normal temperatures that apparently led to some equipment disruptions.”

“We would be skeptical of 19.4% if not for the weather event backing it up,” HARDI Senior Economist Connor Lokar said. “From an economics perspective, U.S. single-unit housing starts rose 9.2% over January 2017. The first half of the year will remain near a double-digit growth pace, but we expect that to downshift to a mid-single-digit pace by year's end.”

The days sales outstanding (DSO), a measure of how quickly customers pay their bills, is now at 47 days.

“The DSO is up a couple points from the December report,” Loftus said. “Forty-seven days is the absolute midpoint of recent reports for this metric for this time of year.”

HARDI members do not receive financial compensation in exchange for their monthly sales data and can discontinue their participation without prior notice or penalty. Participation is voluntary, and the depth of market coverage varies from region to region. An independent entity collects and compiles the data that can include products not directly associated with the HVACR industry.