Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing more than 60,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW_100BestCompaniesToWorkForByRegion_2026-Chicago_Large-W.W._Grainger,_Inc._US1__69b3fd4d5504e0abfadc0515_3

Employees say:"Grainger actually works and lives by our principles: Start with the customer, embrace curiosity, act with intent, compete with urgency, win as one team, invest in our success and do the right thing. &nbsp;They come together to support one another, even those we've never met. &nbsp;I've loved working for this company for over 16 years and hope to remain with the company throughout my professional career."

Best Large Workplaces in Chicago

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DEI-BRG

Employees say:"Our CEO not only lives our core principles but ensures that we hold strong to those principles no matter the political or economic climate. I have worked for corporate companies prior to Grainger, and the overall feeling of connectiveness to each other, to community, and to self, is one that I had not experienced prior. I feel at home with Grainger."

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The companies on this annual list make a conscious effort to be supportive, inclusive workplaces.

2025 Best Large Workplaces for Women_W.W. Grainger, Inc._US1__68a71dfc383bc91cadd06a7f_6

Employees say:"The team culture is unmatched! Everyone is welcoming, willing to step out of their way to help you, and you can always assume good intent from others. Additionally, our leadership strongly values the differences of its team members—above and beyond anything I've seen from other organizations—by ensuring an open space for them to be themselves at work and celebrate the things that make them unique and special."

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Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 62,000 U.S. employees.

Best Workplaces_Chicago_Large_2025-Grainger_US1__67fd6226d94556dd4465c985_2

Employees say:"For me Grainger is an amazing place to work. I can honestly say that both my team and manager care about me, they want to see me succeed at work and my personal life. My team is like an extension of my family. There are so many opportunities for employees here at Grainger—you can move up, move over, or move around to find that position that works best for you. My job/career means a lot to me, and this is where I plan to work until I retire. I tell my friends and family how great it is here and if they are ever looking for a new career/job to come work here because they will also love it as much as I do."

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GPTW-Millennials-Large-2024-Grainger

Employees say:"Our culture is one that is very special and not like other places I've worked. From our opportunities for advancement, a culture of recognition, individual team cultures, the collaborative nature, the focus on DEI, BRG involvement, and volunteer opportunities, it's my home."

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Industries included in the sector are diversified, electronics, and food and grocery.

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Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 50,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW 2024 Chicago Large-Grainger_US1__20240410151431_3

Employees say: "Everyone here makes you feel like you are family - This is something the other companies "try" to achieve but Grainger makes it happen from the get-go. I am VERY proud and blessed to be working with my Grainger Family."

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100 Best Companies 2024-Grainger

Grainger is the country’s leading distributor of maintenance, repair, and supplies for industries like hardware, lighting, and plumbing. Established in 1927, the company now operates the 11th largest online e-commerce site by revenue. &nbsp;Grainger is building two new distribution centers in the U.S., and is adding 3.5 million square feet to its supply chain network for a more than 35% increase in overall warehouse space. &nbsp;In 2022, the company trained all of its team members in a DEI learning course, focusing on unconscious bias and how it emerges in day-to-day work. It aims to have half of its senior leadership roles filled by women by 2030. Currently, its CEO’s leadership team is 43% women while 29% is racially diverse.&nbsp;

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100 BEST COMPANIES 2023-Grainger

This long-standing industrial supply company is adapting to the changing times with an emphasis on diversity. 
<ul> 
 	<li>In the last year, Grainger implemented a technology tool to remove noninclusive language from over 400 job postings; after the revisions went live, the pool of female applicants increased by 15%.</li> 
 	<li>A mandatory e-learning course for leaders tackles unconscious bias, including how it may emerge in day-to-day work and behaviors for managing it.</li> 
 	<li>Senior leadership values transparency, holding monthly calls with all employees to address questions ranging from business operations questions to U.S. Supreme Court decisions to employee compensation.</li> 
 	<li>“Every team member I have encountered during my time at Grainger so far is caring and willing to help each individual succeed,” said one worker. “You are welcomed with open arms, work together as one team, and [colleagues are] willing to help you develop professionally and personally.”</li> 
</ul>

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GPTW Chicago 2023-Grainger

Employees say: 
 
"Grainger does a fantastic job of making sure everybody is able to show up as their true selves. There are multiple BRGs that people can join to feel more connected and informed. Grainger also does a really awesome job of supporting individuals' desires to grow professionally, and offers numerous courses that you can take to grow in your skillset while gaining new knowledge."

GPTW Women 2023-Grainger

Employees say: 
 
"Grainger is the best company I've ever worked for. They go above and beyond to be inclusive to all of our team members. They genuinely seek out feedback from their team members and actually take action on that feedback whenever possible. We're provided more benefits than most other companies and are also paid fairly for the work we do."

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly half a million U.S. employees.

GPTW Millennial Large 2023-Grainger

Employees say: 
 
"Senior leadership invests a lot of time in being transparent about the company’s direction. They strive to foster an inclusive environment, and they genuinely care about the employees. This culture has led to a stronger frontline leadership team. That makes all the difference in wanting to remain with Grainger and knowing it is a great place to work!"

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100-Best-2022-Grainger

This industrial supplies company has appeared on the Best Companies list five times thanks to its emphasis on employee training and its focus on corporate inclusivity. From each team member’s first day, Grainger offers a variety of professional learning opportunities, skills training courses, and leadership programs. Employees spent an average of six hours last year on these supplemental trainings. “I feel that the company never lacks development opportunities,” says one staffer. “It is a main focus of every manager I have worked with so far, having been offered the opportunity to participate in classes and get involved with projects that align to my interests.” Additionally, the company is invested in its diversity efforts, conducting pay equity audits each year and aiming for 50% of its leadership team to be women by 2030.

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GPTW Chicago Large 2022-Grainger

Employees say: 
 
“They provide tremendous resources that encourage growth and development—leaders want us to succeed. The company authentically celebrates and champions diversity, inclusion, and equality. The company also memorialized a 10-year commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” 
 
Read the Great Place to Work review .

GPTW Women 2022-Grainger

Employees say: 
 
“Grainger is unique in that it celebrates all of its employees, all the way from the CEO to the warehouse team members. Everybody is represented and respected here. The pay is above average, not just for the industry but in general. The benefits offered are excellent and add great value to working here. Grainger values talent and ideas at all levels and in my experience has made great strides in growing based on ideas from Team Members or management. There is a great potential for growth within Grainger and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a career to grow into.”

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F500-2021-258-W.W. Grainger

Typically selling to other businesses rather than retail, the supply company sells industrial tools and equipment for heavy machinery, plumbing, tools, and other business needs.

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F500-2020-278-WW-Grainger

The industrial supply company distributes maintenance, repair, and operating equipment to businesses around the world.

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Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

Best Companies

Rank last year

Years on list

U.S. employees

U.S. job openings

Year founded

Benefits

Subsidized childcare

Compressed work weeks

Option to work remotely

Minimum requirement in-office attendance (days per week)

Mental health coverage

Free mental health sessions (per year)

Free backup childcare time off (days)

Maximum $ amount covered for fertility services

Fully paid maternal leave (days)

Fully paid paternal leave (days)

Fully paid adoptive leave (days)

Maternal leave in addition to regular time off (days)

Paid days off for volunteering

Best Workplaces For Women

Industry Vertical

Founded

# Work Sites

Sector

Industry

Current All-Star Rank

Previous All-Star Rank

Industry Rank

Previous Industry Rank

Overall Score

Innovation

People Management

Use of Corporate Assets

Social Responsibility

Quality of Management

Financial Soundness

Long-Term Investment Value

Quality of Products/Services

Global Competitiveness

Strongest Dimension

Previous rank

State

Key Financials (last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (last Fiscal Year)

Earnings Per Share ($)

EPS % Change (from prior fiscal year)

EPS % Change (5 year annual rate)

EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

Total Return

Total Return to Investors (last year)

Total Return to Investors (5 year, annualized)

Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

Best Workplaces In Chicago

Sites

Grainger is an industrial-supply distribution company, focused on safety, security, and storage equipment, along with cleaning, metalworking, and hand tools. As of 2025, it offers over 30 million products to some 4.5 million customers worldwide, but its services are primarily in North America, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The company was founded in 1927.

Q2 2026

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Q4 2025

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Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

W.W. Grainger (GWW): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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W.W. Grainger

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Greetings, and welcome to the W. W. Grainger 4th Quarter 20 24 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Call.

Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Kyle Bland, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning. Welcome to Grainger's Q4 and full year 2024 earnings call. With me are D. J. McPherson, Chairman and CEO and Dean Merriwether, Senior Vice President and CFO.

As a reminder, some of our comments today may include forward looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Additional information regarding factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is included in the company's most recent Form 8 ks and other periodic reports filed with the SEC. This morning's presentation includes non GAAP financial measures, which include certain adjustments in previous periods as noted in the presentation. There were no adjusting items in the Q4 2024 period. Definitions and full reconciliations of our non GAAP financial measures with their corresponding GAAP measures are found in the tables at the end of this presentation and in our earnings release, both of which are available on our IR website.

We will also share results related to Monotaro. Please remember that Monotaro is a public company and follows Japanese GAAP, which differs from U. S. GAAP and is reported in our results 1 month in arrears. As a result, the numbers discussed will differ from Monotaro's public statements.

Thank you, Kyle. Good morning and thanks for joining the call. In 2024, the Grainger team continued to drive our strategy forward by remaining focused on what matters most, providing our customers with exceptional service and a great experience. On these core issues, we made strong progress this past year. We leverage our technology, data and analytical capabilities to drive differentiated value for our customers in both segments.

We invested in supply chain capacity to extend our leadership position in MRO fulfillment. And we remain focused on fostering a workplace environment where all team members can build a rewarding career. These efforts allowed us to deliver on our financial commitments for the year and helped us maintain our track record of driving strong return for shareholders. I'm proud of the progress we've made and want to take a few minutes to highlight some of these accomplishments in more detail. To start, I'd like to ground us in the understanding that all MRO distributors are trying to solve 2 basic customer needs.

1st, customers expect a flawless experience. That means having the products they need, making it simple to find, having a seamless order process, getting it to them quickly and making it easy to receive and pay. 2nd, customers expect their MRO partner to deliver tangible value for their business. This goes far beyond selling products and is something that shows up differently for each customer. It could be simplifying a customer's purchasing process, helping them improve inventory management capabilities, finding product substitutes to save them money or supporting their operational and safety challenges.

Our 2 go to market models, high touch solutions and endless assortment are built to solve these needs for customers of varying sizes and industries. Our teams and processes are structured to help customers find the products they need, buy it with confidence and deliver it next day and complete. We do this while minimizing complexity and showcasing our value added capabilities that are relevant to their context. To do this well and at scale, we continue to build upon our 3 core foundational competencies. These are leveraging our technology and data capabilities to extend our digital advantage, expanding our supply chain footprint to maintain industry leading service and building and cultivating a highly engaged team.

Let me briefly touch on each of these. Over the last several years, we have invested heavily to build market leading data and technology capabilities, including developing proprietary product information and customer information systems. These data assets underpin our 5 strategic growth engines and fuel our ability to gain share within our high touch solution segment. In 2024, we made some great progress. Within merchandising, we have completed a 1st pass review to our full assortment.

This is a tremendous milestone and I'm proud of the continuous improvement mindset the team has taken to advance and standardize the process with this evergreen initiative. We'll continue to review categories and we'll likely see more net assortment growth going forward as we add products to meet evolving customer needs. Our marketing team is focused on driving continued strong returns on our ad spend. In 2024, we expanded our top of funnel marketing efforts to new channels to increase brand awareness. We also iterated on our digital marketing strategy to best capture in the moment demand.

Further, we're finding new ways to utilize our PIM and KIM data assets to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our spend. We have seen positive results in many areas and plan to continue to increase our overall marketing investment again in 2025. We continue to leverage our improved customer data to expand our sales force, adding 1 new geography and around 70 new sellers in 2024 as part of our sales coverage initiative. We slowed our investment in this space in 2024 and to start this year, but we continue to be pleased with our results and expect to add 1 or 2 more geographies later in 2025. Our sales force remains our biggest demand generator and we are investing in tools and resources to increase their effectiveness and help them better serve our customers.

We built and launched a proprietary sellers insights tool that integrates with other Grainger platforms to serve up customer specific insights. This helps our sellers save time and enables more productive customer conversations. And just this week, we are conducting intensive training for ourselves to help them meet their customer needs. Helping our sellers succeed will always be a focus. Within customer solutions, we implemented new homegrown software across our KeepStock platform to enhance our inventory management capabilities and we are piloting new customer facing tools which will provide access to enhanced data and insights.

These investments will help improve the user experience and drive procurement cost savings for our customers. All told, there's plenty of runway across our growth engines to continue powering share into the future. Information advantage we build across product and customer information also unlocks our ability to tap into new and emerging technologies to better serve customers and extend our leadership position in the MRO industry. We're leveraging our proprietary data to find new ways to increase revenue, drive efficiencies and enhance service. We've been developing a variety of different capabilities across the business, including homegrown machine learning, large language models and data tools where we can add incremental value.

We are also piloting off the shelf technologies to help streamline back office processes. To bring this to life, we've included a few examples. In KeepStock, we're leveraging computer vision to streamline our install process. Here a cell phone camera can extract and codify detailed product information to help reduce errors and better organize the layout for the new install. This saves meaningful time for our KeepStock team members lowering the install cost while improving the customer experience.

Our inventory team has been augmenting the planning algorithms of advanced machine learning models to optimize the depth and breadth of products across each market. These new models have been implemented across most of our North American network, driving service level improvements. Going forward, the team sees opportunities across supply chain to further refine our planning capabilities, helping us extend our service lead and optimize asset efficiency. Finally, as mentioned last quarter, we're testing a generative AI model in our call centers, which leverages our proprietary product and customer information to craft well informed responses to customer chat inquiries. This tool allows us to scale our know how and equip our customer service agents with fast relevant responses to help customers get what they need more quickly and efficiently.

We're still in the test phase here, but Autospire technical product specialists have found it to be highly accurate while providing near term, near immediate response times. Down the road, this tool could be applied to other customer reaction channels. We're also investigating how this underlying technology could support other use cases across the business. We are just scratching the surface on how we can continue to leverage our data and these next gen tools to develop advantage across the business. I'm encouraged by the progress we've made in 2024 and for what's to come in 2025 and beyond.

Moving to endless assortment, we made great progress within the segment and continue to propel the Flywheel forward. At Zoro, the team made significant progress on expanding their marketing efforts, growing the assortment and enhancing the customer experience. This includes leveraging data and analytics to optimize the on-site search algorithm and improve delivery communication and capabilities. The result has been a steady flow of user acquisitions, improved B2B customer retention and return to double digit sales growth as we exited the year. Monotaro continues to execute exceptionally well, driving strong results, including 29% growth with enterprise customers.

The business continued to see strong retention rates while deepening our share of wallet with core B2B customers. We are actively sharing learnings across these businesses and are excited to build on our momentum in 2025. Our supply chain is foundational to driving a great customer experience. We have built our supply chain to specifically serve B2B customers with ship next day complete orders. We made significant progress on enhancing our service capabilities and expanding our distribution center network.

This includes beginning construction on new Houston area DC, continued progress at our new Northwest DC and further investments in bulk warehouse capacity, including a roughly $80,000,000 facility in Illinois that we purchased at the end of 2024. Across the network, we see opportunities for automation and other advancements, which will help drive further efficiencies and ensure the long term resilience of our supply chain. As we invest in this space, we remain focused on maintaining our industry leading service advantage now and into the future. Our last foundational competency is our people. At the core of our successes are more than 26,000 team members who live our purpose driven culture.

Our team members are resolute in fulfilling our purpose. We keep the world working and living our principles because we know the work we do matters. This ensures we get the best out of our talent and operate with the highest ethics and integrity. Our company remains an employer of choice as evidenced by being certified a great place to work across North America and Panama. Additionally, this year, we were named the top ranked company across all industries on the American Opportunity Index, which primarily focuses on the experiences of workers in non college degree roles and the company's ability to offer them growth and development no matter their career path.

These recognitions are a testament to our culture, including our commitment to ensure all team members can have a meaningful and fulfilling career here at Grainger. Lastly, I'd like to thank our team members for the critical they played in helping their communities through numerous natural disasters over the past year. This includes ongoing support for customers and local and federal relief agencies across Los Angeles area as they continue to battle the devastating fires. Now turning to our full year financials. The demand environment remains sluggish throughout 2024, where we finished the year with over $17,200,000,000 in sales, up 4.2 percent on a reported basis or up 4.7 percent on a daily organic constant currency basis.

Growth for the year included profitable share gain from our Hi Touch Solutions U. S. Business, which finished the year with roughly 100 basis points of total market outgrowth, including 3 25 basis points of outgrowth on a volume basis. In analyst assortment, the segment showed significant top line improvement with daily constant currency sales up 11.6%. Both Zoro and Monitaro continue to win with their core B2B customer base drive improved repeat purchases rates, positioning them well for the future.

Alongside that solid top line, the team also did a great job delivering continued strong margin performance, all while investing for the future with operating margin finishing at 15.5 percent for the year. Together, these results fueled strong earnings with adjusted EPS up over 6% to $38.96 per share, ROIC finished at 41.6 percent and operating cash flow is over $2,100,000,000 which allowed us to return $1,600,000,000 to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Overall, I'm proud of what we accomplished in 2024 and know we are working on the right initiatives to remain the MRO market leader for years to come. And with that, I will turn it over to Dee to review our Q4 results.

I want to echo DG's sentiment on our strong 2024 performance. Not only did we make progress on a number of strategic initiatives, but the team was also able to deliver on the majority of our 2024 financial commitments. This includes revenue, margin and EPS all finishing within the original guidance ranges we provided this time last year. Now turning to detail on the Q4. We had another good quarter to finish out the year with results coming roughly in line with expectations.

For the total company, daily sales grew 4.2% or 4.7% on a daily organic constant currency basis, which included growth in both segments. Sales were strong in the quarter despite softness in the back half of December from holiday timing and customer shutdowns. Total company gross margins for the quarter were strong ending at 39.6 percent, up 50 basis points over the prior year period. Favorability was mainly driven by the Hi Touch Solutions segment, which I'll detail on the next slide. This gross margin favorability largely flowed through to the bottom line where operating margins ended the quarter at 15%, up 40 basis points versus the prior year.

Overall, we delivered diluted EPS for the quarter of $9.71 which was up over 16% versus the Q4 of 2023. Diving into some segment level results. The Hi Tec Solutions segment continues to perform well with sales up 4% on a reported basis or 3% on a daily organic constant currency basis. Results were driven by solid volume growth and continued improved price contribution within the segment. We also delivered growth across all geographies in the period in local days, local currency.

In the U. S. Specifically, we saw strong growth with government and healthcare customers, which helped to offset more sluggish performance across the other areas. For the segment, gross profit margin finished the quarter at a strong 42.3%, up 90 basis points versus prior year. Favorability was aided by a roughly 50 basis point lap of year end inventory cost adjustments from the prior year as well as slight mix and freight favorability in the current year period.

Price cost for the quarter was roughly neutral. Operating margin for the segment finished the quarter at 17%, which was up 60 basis points versus the prior year. Gross margin favorability in this segment more than offset incremental investment in demand generating activities in the period. Despite the December top line softness, it was a good finish to the year for the Hi Touch Solutions segment. Turning to market outgrowth on Slide 16.

Using our total market model, which includes both producer price index and industrial production inputs, we estimate that Granger took approximately 100 basis points of total share gain in the 4th quarter. As you can see on the slide, this helped us finish full year 2024 with roughly 100 basis points of mathematical share gain in total as our Hi Tec Solutions U. S. Business grew 3.3 percent organically compared to our total MRO market model, which was up between 2% and 2.5% for the year. Pulling apart the model at the bottom of the slide, we drove approximately 3 25 basis points of volume outgrowth for the year.

This growth was offset by a mathematical share loss from price of roughly 2 25 basis points as the PPI sub index we use in the market model inflated meaningfully higher than Granger's price contribution to revenue. As we've discussed all year, our mathematical share gain has been impacted by differences in product and customer mix between our business and the underlying mix that contributes to the PPI and IP sub indices we use as the price and volume inputs to our market model. On price specifically, the dislocation is more dramatic on products that are experiencing high inflation in the current environment such as airplanes and medical equipment. These products are contributing to higher market inflation than what Granger is seeing on MRO specific products. While the total market model remains highly correlated to our performance over time, This period of dislocation has persisted for several quarters.

Our focus as a company has been and is to remain price competitive and grow share via volume based initiatives. With this and given the recent outsized dislocation we've seen in the price component, we will be focusing our market measurement on just the volume component going forward. While the volume component of the model can still have dislocations due to its aggregated and broad nature, we feel it captures the essence of the underlying MRO activity and will serve as a good benchmark for our performance over time. On price, we have several internal and external signals that can be used to ensure that we are remaining price competitive and our ability to do this well can be better monitored through our gross margin results. We will continue to break out our high touch revenue between volume and price in the appendix of these materials each quarter as we pivot to the volume based view.

So with these changes, if you turn to Slide 17, you can see our go forward view of volume only outgrowth, which ties back to the 3 25 basis points of volume contribution from the previous slide for the full year of 2024. This metric still reflects some mix related dislocation, but much less after removing the undue noise from the price component. Overall, we remain confident in our strategic growth engines and their ability to drive share over the long term and continue to target 400 to 500 basis points of average annual outgrowth over time. Turning to the endless assortment segment, sales increased 15.1% or 13.2% on a daily constant currency basis. Zuora U.

S. Was up 13.9%, while Monitaro achieved 14.3% growth in local days local currency. At a business level, ZOLL's growth rate continued to ramp as it has all year. The business saw strong traction across all customer types, including growth in the teens within their core B2B customer group. For the quarter, B2C and B2C like customers grew roughly in line with core B2B, a trend we expect to be reasonably consistent going forward.

At Monitaro, sales growth remains strong with enterprise customers coupled with solid acquisition and repeat purchase rates with core small and midsized businesses. On profitability, operating margins for the segment increased by 80 basis points to 8.6 percent with both businesses contributing year over year. SORL operating margins were up 140 basis points to 3.7% aided by continued operating leverage. At Monotaro, margins remained strong at 12.6% with DC operating efficiencies driving continued year over year improvement. Overall, we're proud of the improved performance through 2024 within the segment and look to continue momentum this year.

Now moving to our 2025 guidance. Our outlook for the year includes revenue to be between $17,600,000,000 $18,100,000,000 at the total company level driven by growth in both segments. This translates to daily constant currency sales growth between 4% and 6.5%. Within our Hi Tec Solutions segment, we expect daily constant currency sales growth between 2.5% and 4.5%. In the U.

S, we expect market volume growth for the full year to remain muted. This is consistent with what we're seeing in the current short cycle environment and does not assume a step change macro recovery that some are projecting for the back half of the year. On share gain, we will continue to target 400 to 500 basis points of U. S. Market volume outgrowth over time.

However, we expect to land in the low end of the range in 2025 from continued measurement dislocation due to mix and as we check and adjust our marketing and seller expansion efforts to incorporate learnings. Lastly, we anticipated minimal pricing inflation for the year, which is in line with what we're hearing from suppliers and seeing in the market for MRO specific products. This assumption excludes any impact from incremental tariffs that may or may not occur in 2025. In the Illus Assortment segment, we anticipate daily constant currency sales to grow between 11% 15%. This segment level growth will be roughly 3 25 basis points lower on a reported basis when you normalize for expected foreign currency exchange headwinds and fewer selling days in the current year period.

At the business unit level, Zoro is anticipated to grow in the low double digits as they continue their momentum and driving higher repeat rates, consistent service and improved target marketing. Monotaro is expected to grow in the low teens at the midpoint in local days and local currency, which normalizes for 3 less selling days in 2025 and expected FX headwinds from the end. This strong performance is fueled by growth with new and enterprise customers alongside strong repeat rates with their core B2B customers. Moving to our margin expectations. We expect total company operating margins to remain strong in 2025 ranging between 15.1% 15.5%.

In the Hi Tec Solutions segment, operating margins are expected to stay healthy, but will contract slightly to be between 17% 17.4%. This is driven by relatively stable gross margins, although they may tick down slightly off a strong finish to 2024. We expect SG and A will modestly delever at the midpoint on a softer top line and continued investment across our growth engines. In Innos assortment, we anticipate operating margin will continue to ramp between 8.5% 9%, up 20 basis points to 70 basis points versus 2024. Slight gross margin headwinds at Laurel from continued growth of lower margin third party ship SKUs will be offset by continued operating leverage at both business units as the flywheel continues to drive new customer growth and repeat purchase rates.

Turning to capital allocation, we expect the business will continue to generate strong cash flow in the year with an expected range of $2,050,000,000 to $2,250,000,000 implying operating cash conversion north of 100%. We plan to continue to execute a consistent return driven approach to our capital allocation strategy, meaning our priorities remain largely unchanged from prior years. We'll continue to invest in the business and expect CapEx in the range of $450,000,000 to $550,000,000 Spending here includes further supply chain investment as we progress with the construction of our new DC capacity. We also plan to advance our data and technology capabilities, helping to further our customer value proposition. Alongside these organic investments, we continue to explore inorganic opportunities that help further our strategy or advance our capabilities.

We plan to remain highly selective here in 2025. Outside of investment, we expect to return the balance of our excess cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. We will formally set our 2025 dividend in the 2nd quarter, but again anticipate consistent annual dividend increases in the high single digit to low double digit percentage range. On share repurchases, we anticipate the amount for 2025 will be between $1,150,000,000 and $1,250,000,000 As in prior years, we feel this return focused allocation philosophy provides the organization optimal flexibility to efficiently manage investment while maximizing shareholder returns now and into the future. In summary, at the total company level, we plan to grow top line by roughly 4% to 6.5% on a daily constant currency basis.

Note that reported sales growth is roughly 130 basis points lower than our daily constant currency range as we're normalizing for FX headwinds and 1 fewer selling day in the current year. A reconciliation of these impacts is provided in the appendix of this presentation. Gross margin and operating margin, as we discussed, will remain healthy for the year leading to an expected EPS growth of flat to up 6.5 percent or $39 to $41.50 per share. Note this expected EPS growth range includes a $20,000,000 net interest headwind in 2025 following our debt refinancing and expected lower interest rates on our cash balances. Further, there's roughly 110 basis point year over year headwind to our EPS growth rate as our effective tax rate normalizes in 2025 after the one time benefit we captured in 2024.

From a seasonality perspective, we expect sales to start slower and ramp as we move through the year. This includes a softer start in January from the timing of the New Year's holiday and the cold weather disruptions experienced during the month. With this, January sales started slow, but picked up momentum as the month progressed with preliminary results up approximately 2.5% on a daily constant currency basis. January growth will be approximately 100 basis points higher if you normalize for the holiday and weather impacts. When translating daily constant currency sales to reported revenue, there's a lot of noise this year, particularly in the Q1.

This is driven by foreign exchange headwinds, which are most pronounced in Q1 before subsiding in the middle of the year. There's also one fewer selling day in February, which reduces revenue by roughly $70,000,000 year over year, representing 160 basis point share win to reported sales growth in the Q1. All in, this translates to expected reported sales of around $4,300,000,000 for the Q1 of 2025. On profitability, given the slower start to sales and one less selling day in the current year period, operating margin rates will be challenged in the Q1 before ramping through the year. This deviates from our normal seasonal pattern as we won't see the price timing favorability we normally capture in Q1 given the low cost inflation environment we're experiencing this year.

With this, 1st quarter operating margins will be closer to the bottom of our 2025 full year guidance range around 15%. This will drive year over year EPS growth to be flat to slightly down in the 1st quarter and will ramp thereafter as the year continues. Lastly, we're reiterating the core tenets of our long term earnings framework, including continued strong top line growth comprised of 400 to 500 basis points of annual volume outgrowth in the high touch U. S. Business and annual revenue growth in the teens for Endless Assortment generally stable gross profit margins within each segment and SG and A growing slower than sales over time, while still investing in demand generating activities to drive sustainable long term growth.

W.W. Grainger (GWW) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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