The Home Depot and Lowe’s grabbed 54.1% of that $312.59 billion and finished with a 22.5% rise in sales. Outside those two, the remaining CS150 members posted a 9.6% gain in sales to total $103.62 billion.All told, sales gainers beat sales decliners 137 to 13. Home centers and hardware chains on the list often recorded gains of more than 40%. In contrast, most of the companies with tepid or negative results are firms that specialize in serving the multifamily and commercial parts of construction—two sectors depressed by the pandemic.“You also could see COVID’s impact based on how hard the company’s home state cracked down on construction,” said Craig Webb, president of Webb Analytics and the report’s author. “Revenues for dealers based in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Michigan, where early restrictions on construction were among the most severe, often trailed those compared with dealers in Texas, Alabama, and Florida, which didn’t lock down as tight.”
The unexpected surge in new-home construction also boosted prospects in those Southern states. For instance, Oldham Lumber and Foxworth-Galbraith, both headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, posted sales gains of 29% and 24%, respectively.
Evidence of any boost from sky-high lumber prices is harder to find in the CS150 report because some of the most lumber-centric dealers also get an outsized share of their business in multifamily and commercial. Among the biggest dealers with extensive sales to tract builders, Builders FirstSource grew 17.6%, BMC (which in 2021 merged with BFS) rose 16.0%, and 84 Lumber climbed 23.3%.
Produced by Webb Analytics, this inaugural Construction Supply 150 is a comprehensive look at how America’s most important sellers of residential construction and repair products did last year. The 150’s membership includes lumberyards, home centers, hardware stores, roofing and drywall specialists, and manufacturers of trusses or other components.
The Census Bureau estimates that $381.89 billion was spent last year at the tens of thousands of lumberyards, specialty stores, home centers, paint stores, and hardware stores dotting the country. The CS150’s percentage of total sales at building material dealers rose in 2020 to 81.9% from 78.2% the year before, but that gain of 370 basis points wasn’t handed out equally. The share held by The Home Depot and Lowe’s rose 413 bp to 54.1% from 49.97%, while the share for all the others fell 65 bp to 24.4% from 25.05%. The thousands of lumberyards, specialty shops, paint, and hardware stores not in the CS150 saw their part of the total market drop to 18.1% from 21.8%.
Sales for all 150 companies averaged $335,371 per employee, a 10% improvement. But if you pull Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Menards from both the revenue and team member counts, the average sales per employee number jumps to $432,713, nearly 5% better than what they reported for 2019.
Because it is meant to be a snapshot of the industry as of Dec. 31, 2020, the CS150 list omits the impact of two major developments in January 2021: The BFS-BMC merger and the move of Beacon Building Products’ interior specialty stores into Foundation Building Materials following FBM’s purchase by private-equity firm American Securities LLC. The full report includes a chart showing how the top 20 rankings changed as a result of these moves. The report also breaks down the rankings as of the end of 2020 based on the company’s primary business emphasis.
The CS150 was produced with sponsorship support from Epicor, Buildxact, Dealers Choice, and Tando.
A list of the CS150’s top 25 follows.
Here is the Construction Supply 150 list’s Top 25 Companies:
| Rank | Company/City/State | 2020 sales ($ millions) | 2019 sales ($ millions) | Sales % change, 2020 vs. 2019 |
| 1 | The Home Depot, Atlanta, GA * | $122,158.0 | $101,333.0 | 20.6% |
| 2 | Lowe's, Mooresville, NC * | $84,310.8 | $67,169.8 | 25.5% |
| 3 | Menards, Eau Claire, WI * | $12,840.0 | $10,700.0 | 20.0% |
| 4 | ABC Supply, Beloit, WI | $12,100.0 | $11,600.0 | 4.3% |
| 5 | Builders FirstSource, Dallas, TX * | $8,558.9 | $7,280.4 | 17.6% |
| 6 | Beacon Building Products, Herndon, VA * | $6,665.3 | $6,869.2 | -3.0% |
| 7 | Ferguson, Newport News, VA * | $6,542.6 | $6,392.7 | 2.3% |
| 8 | Harbor Freight Tools, Calabasas, CA * | $5,400.0 | $4,900.0 | 10.2% |
| 9 | 84 Lumber, Eighty Four, PA | $4,700.0 | $3,811.1 | 23.3% |
| 10 | US LBM, Buffalo Grove, IL | $4,265.1 | $3,500.5 | 21.8% |
| 11 | BMC, Raleigh, NC * | $4,207.3 | $3,626.6 | 16.0% |
| 12 | SRS Distribution, McKinney, TX | $3,570.3 | $3,115.9 | 14.6% |
| 13 | GMS, Tucker, GA * | $3,137.5 | $3,250.6 | -3.5% |
| 14 | Floor & Decor Holdings, Atlanta, GA * | $2,425.8 | $2,045.5 | 18.6% |
| 15 | Kodiak Building Partners, Highlands Ranch, CO | $1,766.6 | $1,256.4 | 40.6% |
| 16 | Carter Lumber, Kent, OH | $1,750.1 | $1,504.3 | 16.3% |
| 17 | UFP Industries, Grand Rapids, MI * | $1,695.7 | $1,637.2 | 3.6% |
| 18 | Northern Tool & Equipment, Burnsville, MN * | $1,500.0 | $1,465.0 | 2.4% |
| 19 | Foundation Building Materials, Santa Ana, CA * | $1,385.8 | $1,993.1 | -30.5% |
| 20 | Sutherland Lumber, Kansas City, MO * | $1,306.3 | $1,045.0 | 25.0% |
| 21 | Lumber Liquidators Holdings, Richmond, VA * | $1,097.7 | $1,092.6 | 0.5% |
| 22 | McCoy's Building Supply, San Marcos, TX | $1,073.4 | $881.1 | 21.8% |
| 23 | Lansing Building Products, Richmond, VA | $991.7 | $597.4 | 66.0% |
| 24 | Service Partners (TopBuild), Daytona Beach, FL * | $774.6 | $717.4 | 8.0% |
| 25 | Contractors Warehouse, Roseville, CA * | $768.0 | $746.0 | 2.9% |
* — Some numbers are adjusted for calendar rather than fiscal years or to cover solely the company’s U.S. operations related to residential construction and repair. A few numbers are estimates. See footnotes section of report for explanations.