A company that provides credit management services for firms that supply building materials to pros revealed today that its latest survey indicates contractors are feeling even more optimistic about business conditions in the third quarter than their peers did just a few months before. But other data from the same company indicates a spending per pro has slowed and economic activity is flat.
According to a survey of 154 pros taken in September for BlueTarp's Building Supply Index report for the third quarter, nearly 35% of the respondents said conditions were improving. That's roughly 10 points better than what a similar group of remodelers reported several months earlier. The percentage of pros feeling positive about the U.S. economy's health also was much higher.
This year marks the first since 2011 in which pro contractors have gotten better at paying their LBM bills on time, BlueTarp reported. Its X-Y chart (at right) shows a partial improvement in the delinquency rate and a marked decline in per-customer spending so far this year. That ends pros' dramatic spending gains made at the 2,000+ suppliers nationwide for which BlueTarp provides credit management and collection services. Those suppliers collectively have more than 120,000 pro customers with accounts.
"The performance tier has improved," Scott Simpson, BlueTarp's president and CEO, told ProSales in an interview. "This year has broken a four-year trend of us every year having delinquencies higher than the previous year."
BlueTarp also updated its Building Supply Index, a weighted combination of BlueTarp's proprietary spending and delinquency data plus federal data on building permits and construction spending and the Conference Board's index of consumer confidence. A score of 100 is benchmarked to conditions as of April 2013.

For the third quarter, the index (shown above) stood at 124.87, just 0.1% above where it was a year earlier. The 12-month trailing average was 117.1, or 0.5% lower than the 12-month average as of the second quarter of this year.