Patrick Baumann: That makes sense. I appreciate the extra color there. I just have a very quick follow-up on the Onsite signings. How did things progress through the quarter? And I’m asking only because last quarter, you said maybe some slipped out of the fourth quarter for whatever reason and could have been pushed into this year. So wondering if there was any evidence of that.
Dan Florness: It was pretty consistent all quarter. I think March was the biggest, but I’d have to look back at it. Sometimes, when you have 40 numbers in your head, you lose track of fived.
Patrick Baumann: Okay. Thank you very much.
Dan Florness: Yeah. You bet.
Operator: And your next question is coming from Ryan Merkel from William Blair. Your line is now live.
Ryan Merkel: Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me in. I just have one question. Dan, you said that change is hard, and you feel good about where you’re going. Can you just unpack what about the change is difficult? Or what about the change is creating friction?
Dan Florness: The – I mentioned earlier that we split the US into two business units 15 years ago. If we were to share numbers by business unit, you would find out that there’s two different stories going on in the business right now. in the Eastern US, and there’s no — it’s not a coincidence why Casey Miller stepped into running into the US and why eight years ago, I think it was eight years ago, in the fall of 2095, maybe nine years ago, or 8.5 years, I asked Casey to step out of leading our, what we referred to as, the SEC, our Southeast Central region, which is basically Kentucky and Tennessee. And I asked him to run the entire Eastern US Casey’s done a wonderful job. It doesn’t mean we agree on everything and we don’t, but has once in a while, that’s good and healthy.
But we asked Casey, Jeff, why don’t you ask Casey to run the US business and put the best people in the best roles for us to find success of the organization. Our Western business unit was negative this quarter. Our Eastern business unit was positive this quarter. Our Onsite signings aren’t equally split between the Eastern US and the Western US. And that’s been true for a number of years. And change is hard from the standpoint. It can get entrenched into a successful business. I remember a number of years ago, and I’ll pick on a particular market, and that was Des Moines, Iowa. Great market for us, great people. We have become more obsessed with how profitable we are and our returns in that market than we were about the joy of growth. And we stirred up that pot, and we made a change five years ago and said, “No, we’re about growth and expanding the people we partner with as much as we are about making a great return for our shareholders because ultimately, the best answer for our shareholders and our employees is grow the business, grow the opportunity, grow the returns.
And I’m pleased to say that we’ve done that. In fact, I’m tipping my hand on a couple of things I’m going to talk about in the annual meeting. One is some of the trade-offs we’ve made and some is looking at some discrete markets we’re in and what those trade-offs have meant to a mature business who decided, you know what, I’m going to get dressed today a little differently than I have for the last 20 years, I’m going to go out and engage in the marketplace in a fundamentally different way and the people we’ve been promoting into leadership roles, whether it be branch managers, district managers or Regional Vice Presidents as well as people like Casey Miller. We want people that have more joy in growing the business than in just harvesting the business.
And Holden needs to keep us balanced because he just touched his heart when I said that. We want to do both, but it’s a growth issue. And sometimes you have to change how you go to market.
Ryan Merkel: Got it. Got it. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. As a reminder our next question is coming from Nigel Coe from Wolfe Research. Your line is now live.
Dan Florness: And Nigel, this will be our — it’s five minutes to the hour, so this will be our last question. And Nigel, go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hey, guys. This is actually Will Frank [ph] on for Nigel. Thanks for fitting me in. I guess, first on price/cost, pricing flat in the quarter. I guess do you think that you can say price/cost positive if pricing remains flat. And then maybe just if you could let us know how pricing was in the quarter ex fasteners. That would be really helpful.
Holden Lewis: Pricing ex fasteners remains positive. And pricing at this point is, frankly, within that kind of 0% to 2% range. And so you can kind of conclude that whatever we’re negative on fasteners is being largely offset, maybe a little more than offset with non-fasteners. And at this point, to be honest, the pricing environment is fairly unremarkable, which is why we’re not giving it as much time and energy in our dialogue. So that’s probably how I would characterize that. And I’m sorry, what was the first part I might have missed? Must have got it.
Unidentified Analyst: Must have got it.
Operator: Thank you. We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.
