HARDI Distributors Report 4.5% Revenue Increase in April — Early Signs of a Cooling Season Rebound
The HVAC distribution sector posted its strongest monthly result in recent memory, but the story behind the number is more nuanced than the headline suggests.
HVAC distributors tracked by the Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) reported a 4.5% revenue increase in April 2026 compared to the same month last year, according to HARDI's monthly TRENDS report released June 2.
The result marks a meaningful uptick for a distribution sector that has been navigating soft demand, elevated inventory levels, and a sluggish residential market for much of the past two years. But HARDI's analysts are cautioning against reading too much into a single month — because the April gain was largely driven by the weather, and the weather wasn't cooperative everywhere.
Temperature Did the Heavy Lifting
April is the first month of cooling season, and this year it arrived with above-normal temperatures across more than half the country. That timing mattered enormously for distributor revenue.
HARDI Senior Market Analyst Brian Loftus noted that the warmest region posted sales growth of nearly 20% for April, while the region that experienced below-normal temperatures saw sales decline by almost 5.5%. In other words, the national 4.5% gain wasn't evenly distributed — it was a tale of two climates.
For contractors, this pattern is familiar. A hot April pulls forward equipment replacements, emergency service calls, and seasonal tune-up demand. It compresses weeks of potential sales into a short window. The question is whether that momentum holds into May and June, or whether it was simply borrowed from later in the season.
The 12-Month Picture Is More Cautious
Zoom out and the recovery looks less dramatic. Annual sales growth for the 12 months through April 2026 came in at 2.8% — positive, but modest, and well below the pace needed to work through the inventory buildup that has weighed on distributors since the post-COVID normalisation.
Loftus pointed to flat existing home sales, a weak job market, and higher inflation as ongoing headwinds keeping distributor sales growth subdued. These aren't HVAC-specific problems — they're macro conditions that reduce the volume of new installs and replacement jobs that flow through the distribution channel.
One Bright Spot: Customers Are Paying Their Bills
Buried in the TRENDS report is a metric that doesn't get enough attention — Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), which measures how quickly end customers are paying distributor invoices.
The DSO for April 2026 came in at under 38 days, consistent with the previous April, and quicker than the April figures recorded from 2022 through 2024. Loftus described end market customers as appearing stable — a quiet but important signal that financial stress among contractors and commercial operators hasn't meaningfully worsened despite the broader economic pressure.
For distributors, a stable DSO means cash flow is predictable. For the industry, it suggests the demand that does exist is being backed by customers who can actually pay.
What Distributors Are Watching Now
The real test for 2026 distribution performance is the summer selling season. Loftus said the industry is rooting for a successful selling season to trim inventory levels, which would allow the sales-to-inventory ratio to return to normal by football season.
That benchmark — a normalised inventory ratio by September — has been the quiet target for distributors all year. Too much inventory means capital tied up in warehouses, pressure on margins, and less flexibility to respond to new product cycles including the ongoing A2L refrigerant transition.
A strong June and July could get the channel back to balance. A cooler-than-expected summer would push that timeline into 2027.
What It Means for Contractors
For HVAC contractors, the April data points to a few practical realities heading into peak season:
Distributors are still working through inventory, which means equipment availability is generally good and aggressive pricing is more likely than it was during the post-COVID shortage years. The window to lock in pricing before any further manufacturer price increases — and June 2026 has seen several — is now.
The regional split in April performance also serves as a reminder of how weather-dependent this business remains. Contractors in markets that had a slow April should expect compressed demand to come — it doesn't disappear, it shifts.
And the stable DSO data suggests the overall contractor market, while not booming, isn't deteriorating either. Customers are still spending. Service calls are still getting paid. For a sector that worried about a sharper correction, that stability is worth something.
