Operator
Our next question comes from Garden with Lambo security. Your line is open
Garden Peter- Lambo Security
Thank you. Good morning everyone. I’m glad to listen that the over emphasis of gross margin has finally been recognized. I have two questions. One that can we look at the current business situations as we look at the 15. First quarter has a very easy composite as we did in december from the weather impact as we did it a year ago. If you look into it, you’re not gonna forget january and february so quickly. Can you give some ideas, some benefits from there and as second part of that thing can you talk about how the heavy manufacturing impact in the 20% of your business . You know if you talk about the impact of Ag, and the Canadian economy which you know is is starting to show signs of stretch. And particularly the Agmark is the winner, we know it’s crashing at the moment. And with Canada becoming a bit of problem or not.
Daniel L. Florness – Chief Financial Officer
A bunch of, quite a few items there that I’ll try to bounce through with you and Leland J. Hein – President & CEO or Will if you wanna chime in, feel free. Um, you know first off on the end market piece the manufacturing that business really improved for us and I think that really shines through in the fact that, you know, we exit the year with our Fastenal business growing double digit. We started the year with the Fastenal business growing low singles, one, one and a half per cent, first quarter, 1.9 fourth quarter of the last year. That says a lot to the health, og our O.E.M manufacturing customer out there. So I think that has you know, uh very good trends going into the new year. You know when I think of our Canadian business, and I know enough of you know, some, about a lot of the details sometimes get myself in trouble in a conversation. To me the biggest issue we have with our Canadian business right now isn’t how well it’s growing, it’s the, it’s the value of currency.
That business grew in the mid-single, in the double digits, excuse me. Here when I’m looking at the last few months but what shines through on our company level when you look at it in USD it cuts that down by almost two thirds because of the inflation in the currency but the underlying business up there is, for us it’s healthy. One thing you have to keep in mind when you look at our business in Canada, it is weighted towards the eastern part of the country. We went in on Ontario first and because we were expanding from the basically the Great Lake states in the U.S when we first entered Canada in the mid-nineties. So we’ve a big chunk of business that’s in the Ontario Province and then out towards the Maritimes. It was later that we more expanded into Western Canada from the standpoint of where our dollars are. And that business, that Eastern part of the country is stronger than the western part. Obviously the western part is much more linked to extractive industries.
Garden Peter- Lambo Security
I think you can just restrict that to weather impact and Ag.
Daniel L. Florness – Chief Financial Officer
Well the weather coming into last year, we had a tough start to the year. The weather really beat us up and weather, while it’s been cold in the upper Mid-West hasn’t been pounded by the weather you saw. And time will tell how that plays into January and into February but I don’t see weather as a threat right now.
Willard D. Oberton – Chairman
We did have a good March last year so that balances it out to weather, why we came back very strong, it wasn’t the entire quarter that was affected. It was mainly January.
