The SRS Deal: Times are changing
Back in 2007, Home Channel News—the forerunner of HBSDealer—traveled to Atlanta and spoke with Home Depot’s then CEO Frank Blake, a leader frequently credited with righting the ship of an off-course orange-colored organization.
He spoke of focus.
"You downscope what you try to do," he said. "You try to do fewer things better, rather than a lot of things OK.”
He added that every day at the retailer’s headquarters brings opportunities that might lead to revenue and value. "But you have to say, 'that’s not core to our business right now,' " Blake said. "Now is a good time to focus on what we need to focus on—our core retail company.”
WIth that attitude, the company closed its floor stores, shuttered its HD Landscape Supply and divested of its industrial-strength HD Supply division.
Things were a little different back then. Actually a lot different.
There was a post-Nardelli corporate culture to recapture. There was a crisis in the home construction industry. (Single family starts plunged to 622,000 in 2008, and were about to hover a few years in the 400,000s.) There was no such thing as US LBM Holdings or Nation’s Best, but there were such things as Stock Building Supply, BMC and ProBuild Holdings (now all rolled up into a powerfully growth-oriented Builders FirstSource).
Home Depot reacquired an MRO version of HD Supply in 2020, in an $8 billion deal to boost its maintenance, repair and operations ceiling.
Now comes an even bigger pro play: an $18 billion blockbuster for SRS Distribution, the Kinney, Texas-based specialty distributor of roofing materials (and more) with multiple brands across 760 locations and 47 states.