Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Nigel Coe: Thanks. Good morning.
John Engel: Hello, Nigel.
Nigel Coe: Can you hear me okay? Hey, guys.
John Engel: Yes, we can hear you.
Nigel Coe: John, just want to go back to the bullwhip concept. Obviously, your suppliers are part of that bullwhip and arguably they should be more impacted by the sort of the inventory sequencing through the channel. So just would love your perspective on how some of your major suppliers like Schneider and Eaton, are showing mid to high teens growth in North America versus low single-digit growth for the use. So any perspective there would be really helpful. And there’s been some questions coming in about some of your suppliers, you’re using different channels or going direct to customers. Is there any change that you’re seeing in the way the product is getting to customers?
John Engel: On the latter part of the question is absolutely not. And I know that there’s been some commentary out there, a little bit of noise around that. We’re not seeing that. Because, again, our bid activity levels, Nigel, are at record levels. And we specifically spiked out one of the recent wins in EES, and showed it in our webcast deck, which is one of these newer, let’s call it, mega project wins that just shows, and again, that’s — if you look at how we bid and won that, we did it by providing a combined solution across numerous product categories and the strength of the broader WESCO. So I think — I can tell you, with our bid activity levels, our customer engagement, I couldn’t be more pleased with. The opportunity pipeline that we’re managing is at a record level.
And that includes more complete solutions, where we’re cross-selling inside each SBU intra, because of the WESCO Anixter combination, and increasingly across the SBUs. I think we’re uniquely positioned with our portfolio to provide a complete solution and one-stop shop for these larger mega projects. So that’s the last part of your question. I’ve seen no evidence of that as yet. And I don’t expect to see it quite frankly. The reality is I’ve been in this industry over two decades. And for engineered components and products, there’s always been a portion that has gone direct versus through distribution. That dynamic is not a new dynamic. So back to your first part of your question, I don’t — I typically won’t go specifically — talk about an individual supplier or competitor.
I will say, I’d encourage you to look at the complete composite of our supplier base. We obviously have large suppliers for our Electrical business. We have very large suppliers for our Utility business. We have very large suppliers for our communication or our UBS business. We have very large suppliers for a CSS business. And when you look at that — if you look at that complete composite, you see a lot of different things occurring. If you look at our CSS business and look at those major suppliers, it will remain nameless, you know who they are, dramatic disparity in growth rates in terms of what we’re doing versus them. Again, good we’re at the other end of that supply chain whipsaw effect. When you look at utility and then you move into electrical, we have one supplier in particular that has both utility and electrical who’s reported results this quarter line up directly with us and it’s a good proxy.
And we have other large suppliers in electrical that go through us and a global supplier that goes through our major competitor in the US. And if you look at their growth rates, that’s a private company, it’s an ESOP. One of the top five in the US. You’ll see that we’re in the same ZIP code range in terms of results. So and delta also in terms of what the supplier is doing versus the distributor competitor. So I’ll end on this note. Our project sales grew in the quarter. What is down is our stock inflow. And our major supplier partners to Electrical have two components of their business, they have, they feed our stock and flow via our purchases, but they also have project business that goes through us and some goes around us. And so we’re seeing the strength in our project business, and we expect that we’re at the front end of that super cycle.
Nigel Coe: Thanks, John. There’s a few more pieces to the jigsaw there, so thanks for the help there. And then, Dave, just my follow-on is just look at the math you gave on the back half sequential, which is really helpful. It looks like you’re implying sort of year-over-year growth in 3Q and 4Q of roughly 2%, 3% organic, I think it is. Number one, is that correct? And then thinking about that July prelim sales of 3%. If we take out Rahi, it looks like organic is closer to 1% to 2%. So just wondering the confidence that we have that organic accelerates from July into the back half of the year.
