Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) released its monthly TRENDS report, showing sales by HARDI distributors decreased by 4.8% during May 2026.

The annual sales growth for the 12 months through May 2026 is an increase of 2.6%.

“Almost a 5% sales decline is a lousy start for the first meaningful month of cooling season, but it is not as weak as the headline,” said Brian Loftus, senior market analyst at HARDI. “This May had one less billing day than May of 2025. We estimate sales would have been about flat or comparable year-to-year with the same number of billing days.”

HARDI’s monthly distributor sales survey also calculates Days Sales Outstanding or DSO which is a measure of how quickly customers pay their bills. The DSO for May 2026 was less than 38 days.

“There is seasonality to the DSO, so we need to compare the latest results to the corresponding prior months,” Loftus said. “The May DSO is a bit quick than the 40 days reported during May of 2022, may of 2023, and May of 2024.”

“An early start to heating season got sales off and running in our Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions,” Loftis said. "With a lot of difficult weather comps across the country during the next couple of months, we need that summer magic to cook-up some demand or our annual sales growth will remain in low single-digit range.”