Quikrete Industry Dashboard - (Week 22, 2025)
The Week 22, 2025 edition of the Quikrete Industry Dashboard reveals a pep in the U.S. economy's step amid what has been a monthslong rollercoaster. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index for May illustrates this renewed optimism.
As we shared earlier this week:
“Consumer confidence improved in May after five consecutive months of decline,” said Stephanie Guichard, Senior Economist, Global Indicators at The Conference Board. “The rebound was already visible before the May 12 U.S.-China trade deal but gained momentum afterwards."
Guichard elaborated further:
"The monthly improvement was largely driven by consumer expectations as all three components of the Expectations Index—business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—rose from their April lows. Consumers were less pessimistic about business conditions and job availability over the next six months and regained optimism about future income prospects. Consumers’ assessments of the present situation also improved. However, while consumers were more positive about current business conditions than last month, their appraisal of current job availability weakened for the fifth consecutive month.”
This week’s Dashboard also shows the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas is now $3.16. That’s down two cents from last month’s average, and pump prices remain far below last year's nationwide average of $3.56 in late-May 2024, according to AAA's daily data.
California ($4.80), Hawaii ($4.48) and Washington ($4.41) once again have by far the highest average gas prices in the U.S., with Oregon ($4.01) and Nevada ($3.88) not too far behind. Meanwhile, Mississippi ($2.66) and Louisiana ($2.73), as well as Texas and Alabama ($2.74) have the cheapest average pump prices as of May 30.
It was a big week for financial news, with HBSDealer publishing its latest 10-Q review, tracking the quarterly financial performance of major publicly traded companies in the hardware and building supply industry. As we shared, there was plenty of red to go around:
“Roughly 65 percent of the companies tracked posted declines in their most recent quarter. The median sales decline for the 29 reporting companies was 2.0 percent. The median earnings decline was 7.2 percent.”
In building materials industry stock news, Week 22 (mostly) carried forward positive momentum seen in the markets the last few weeks. Every stock on our list except Builders FirstSource (-9.4%), Tractor Supply (-1.3%) ticked up over the last month, with Stanley Black & Decker (+8.6%), PPG (+7.9%) and Masco (+5.5%) seeing the biggest bumps. Year-over-year, however, just Home Depot (+13.9%) and Lowe’s (+6.4%) are up.
See the up-to-the minute stock prices of 30 industry companies tracked by HBSDealer here.
