My name is Chris and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the DXP Enterprises 2022 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. Kent Yee, Chief Financial Officer, you may begin.
Thank you, Chris. This is Kent Yee, and welcome to DXP's Q3 2022 conference call to discuss our results for the third quarter ending September 30th, 2022. Joining me today is our Chairman and CEO, David Little. Before we get started, I want to remind you that today's call is being webcast and recorded and includes forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. A detailed discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material effect on our business on an ongoing basis are contained in our SEC filings. However, DXP assumes no obligation to update that information as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we may present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release.
The press release and an accompanying investor presentation are now available on our website at ir.dxpe.com. I will now turn the call over to David Little, our Chairman and CEO, to provide his thoughts and a summary of our third quarter performance and financial results. David?
Good morning, and thank you, Kent. Thanks to everyone for joining us today on our fiscal 2022 third quarter conference call. I will begin today with some perspectives on our third quarter and thoughts about the full year and our future. Congratulations, DXPeople. Our third quarter sales of $387.3 million is a sales record for DXP during the quarter. Thanks to each of you for your efforts to be customer-driven and your part in diversifying into new markets like food and beverage, water and wastewater, plus growing our existing markets. We as a company have a more stable industrial base that will serve us well into the future.
We have also added technical products and service technologies to our outstanding product and service mix that will also serve us well into the future of digital automation, compressed air, filtration, biofuels, carbon capture, hydrogen that will help us make our lives better. Every day, DXPeople serve essential customers and help the environment by being more efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly. Our goal is to help our customers with their sustainability goals and for us to lead by example. to be customer-driven in a changing world is exciting and fun. It is also hard work, and I thank all the DXPeople for their efforts and enthusiasm for making DXP meaningful by helping our customers succeed. How are we doing? Nine acquisitions over the last two years in water and wastewater industry.
This is not only a stable industry, but very important to our lives and the environment. Three compressed air acquisitions. Compressed air saves energy and is environmentally friendly. In 2014, energy was 66% of our business, and today, 27%. Note that this could be a good market for 2023, and we would be glad to see the 20% grow. Long term, our focus is helping make energy environmentally friendly, efficient and safe. New markets, hydrogen, biofuels, carbon capture, storage of carbon waste. We have the expertise and products to help our customers succeed in reducing carbon emissions. National accounts, this is growing especially in rotating equipment. Service and repair initiatives in compressed air and pumps. Automation and controls. All mechanical equipment needs controls, and automation creates efficiencies, safety, and reliability.
As a distributor, we have very little environmental impact and consume very little energy, but we will do better. The real fun is helping others with our technical expertise to reduce their energy consumption, carbon capture, renewable energy and safety. These growth strategies, which include both organic and inorganic plans, are what we are doing to grow DXP and help the environment by helping our customers with their sustainability goals. Our Q3 results were great, and everyone did a good job of passing on supplier price increases. Our gross margins are still being affected by payroll costs and inflation, which is to be expected, and overall, inflation is good for DXP. We sold DXP's 49% ownership in PumpWorks Castings to the 51% ownerships at a $1.3 million loss, which is a one-time event.
We will still have access to this foundry for supply chain help and quick deliveries. It is worth noting that all of the acquisitions over the last few years have helped us improve EBITDA margins. Our adjusted EBITDA dollars increased sequentially, which is always our goal. In terms of DXP's industrial, energy, and utility markets, we seem to be well-positioned headed into next year as our end users, such as aerospace, water and wastewater, air compression, food and beverage, renewable energy, hydrogen, environmental products seem to look like growth markets even in a slow overall economy. DXP's industrial market, which is our largest market, continues to have legs and show signs of positive upward movement.
The ISM PMI Manufacturing Index, which gives us an indication of how DXP's broad industrial markets will perform, have an average reading of 53% through June and a September reading of still 50.9%. These end markets, including food and beverage, chemical, aerospace, compressed air, manufacturing, general industry should serve us well. That said, inflation is good for DXP, and a slower economy or even a declining economy is manageable, but we have not yet seen any decline in activity in the markets DXP is serving. In terms of our energy market, we continue to see growth in oil, gas, biofuels, carbon capture, hydrogen sequestration. We experienced a significant pickup in organic sales activity in Q3, which reflects the increase in backlog we began to see during Q3 of last year.
The pickup is consistent with commentary around U.S. majors and small exploration and production companies increasing Cap budgets in 2023. That said, we are seeing delivery impacts related to supply chain issues that is slowing deliveries. Our oil and gas activity is not back to 2018- levels, albeit growing in that direction. DXP's technical expertise within energy has positioned us on the forefront of engineering, design, fabrication, and many environmental solutions and projects. Specific to renewable, DXP has designed and fabricated many biofuel and hydrogen projects. As to the environment, DXP's effort to help our customers with carbon capture and sequestration projects continue to gain momentum. DXP is excited to be participating in engineering on many projects with our legacy customer base.
Hydrogen is also an emerging technology, and DXP is leveraging packaging capabilities to participate in projects around green, blue, gray, and other hydrogen solutions. DXP is excited and well-positioned to capitalize on energy transition efforts for years to come. We are seeing increase in energy Cap budgets, which have been gradual and should accelerate as we move into 2023. Our utility market of water and wastewater is gaining traction with nine acquisitions plus organic growth within existing Service Centers. the outlook is great for 2023. Several projects in 2022 have exceeded their budgets because of inflation, so we should see increased demand in 2023 and beyond. With three market categories and many markets, we are building a more resilient, diversified business that can generate solid performance in more uncertain markets, and we believe we are seeing the evidence of these efforts.
Regarding acquisitions during the quarter, we closed the Sullivan Environmental Technologies, Inc. As we mentioned earlier, we are excited to have them as part of our DXP Water division. We are continuing to see inflation across our product groups, but as we have discussed over the years, inflation is good for our business. Price increases are passed through to our customers. We have received multiple price increase notices from our vendors and expect this to continue throughout the year. The increases have moderated down to more normal amounts for the beginning of next year. With global supply chain problems, our backlog at all-time high, it does appear that supply chains are not getting worse. As we head into the holiday season, bookings are starting to flatten in some areas as we close out 2022. All of our segments are doing very well and have positive outlooks for next year.
Service Centers is hiring sales professionals. National rotating equipment contracts have reached activity levels that require us to hire two additional sales professionals. Plus, SCS can help with supply chain problems which puts their services in demand. IPS is busy with environmental projects, renewables, remanufacturing, and energy companies are increasing new capital budgets for 2023. During our financial results, our third quarter reflects sequential growth and improvements in our end markets. Total DXP sales for Q3 increased 5.3% sequentially and $38.7 million or 33.8% year-over-year. As always, thank you to our DXPeople family for your hard work and dedication.
We are excited to add Sullivan in Q3 and look forward to continued growth in our DXP Water division. All of our acquisitions continued to perform during Q3, and we look forward to having everyone's results for a full year in 2023. Again, keep up the good work, and we are excited to have everyone as part of our DXP family. It is always my pleasure to share our performance and financial results on everyone's behalf. We continue to build our capabilities to provide technical set of products and services in all our markets, which makes DXP unique in our industry and gives us more ways to help our customers win. In terms of our segment financial Service Centers sales of $260.1 million, followed by Supply Chain Services sales of $68.2 million, and Innovative Pumping Solutions sales of $59 million.
The diversity of the end markets and MRO nature Service Centers allows us to continue to remain resilient and grow sales. Supply Chain Services experienced significant sales improvement in the quarter, driven by the addition of the diversified chemical customer, as well as overall growth in existing customer base, and expect activity to increase as we move through the year. With disruptions in global supply chain, DXP's SCS is uniquely qualified to help customers with their maintenance, repair, operating, and production supplies. We are excited about the supply chain business moving forward because our customers are looking for companies that can digitize the supply chain, resulting in a reliable supply of MROP goods and services. The customers are needing demand planning and forecasting and someone to monitor transportation, logistics, and inventory levels, detecting issues and taking action well in advance of a problem.
DXP Supply Chain Services is well-qualified to manage the complete supply chain by increasing efficiencies, eliminating downtime, all while keeping the customer's facility up and running. Results in increased production, ultimately saving the customers' money while improving their bottom line. Our IPS segment is growing backlog and continues to increase bookings as our energy business continues to grow but is slowed by supply chain constraints. Our utility markets through water and wastewater, included in IPS because of the capital nature of this business, is growing and should have a positive runway for several years looking forward. DXP's overall gross profit margins for the quarter improved to 28.8%.
This reflects positive contributions from our acquisitions and continued improvement, albeit a decrease from a year ago because of increased labor cost, inflation, and a mix shift in increased supply chain services growth, which, as you know, has lower gross profit margins. Overall, DXP produced EBITDA of $34.3 million, and EBITDA as a percent of sales of 8.9%, which is a 240 basis point improvement over Q3 of 2021. This is a continued sign of DXP getting operating leverage, which we saw in Q1 and Q2 as well, and which we would expect as we grow organic sales. In summary, DXP's financial performance was great to see with continuous sequential increases. We look to continue to drive improvement in our organic sales and marketing strategies and inorganic growth through acquisitions in certain geographies and industries.
While we are encouraged by our performance in the third quarter, we are continuing to plan thoughtfully for next year, given supplier price increases, labor shortages, supply chain constraints, and concerns of when a slower economy is coming. We continue to see the industry and consumers we serve continue to grow as our backlog and bookings continue to perform. DXPeople are working hard to give our customers the service they deserve and expect, which is not easy given the headwinds we all face. I am pleased with our performance in Q3 as we continue to move forward to achieve our goals. Our strategies and digital tools are helping us grow sales, and we expect to drive productivity, manage working capital, and create free cash flow. With that, I will now turn it back to Kent to review the financials in more detail.
Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone for joining us for our review of our third quarter 2022 financial results. Q3 financial performance reflects our eighth quarter of sequential sales increases during this COVID cycle and the subsequent and interrelated challenges, including inflation, supply chain constraints, and a war. Despite these challenges, DXP continues to successfully navigate through the market and has been able to execute and create value for all our stakeholders. I'm excited to report that our Q3 2022 financial performance is the highest performing sales quarter in DXP's history. While a notable milestone, we look forward to continuing to strive to meet new sales thresholds and build DXP organically and through acquisitions. We have been successful in transforming, growing, and diversifying DXP. As it pertains to our third quarter, DXP's third quarter financial results reflect a combination of business actions we have undertaken.
More specifically, Q3 takeaways are as follows. Continued strong organic sales growth and contribution from acquisitions. Consistent ability to manage inflation and price Service Centers performance marked by continued gross margin stability, further sales increases within SCS, along with another quarter increase in the IPS backlog and consistent operating leverage leading to sustained adjusted EBITDA margins. Total sales for the third quarter increased 33.8% year-over-year and 5.3% sequentially to $387.3 million. Acquisitions that have been with DXP for less than a year contributed $16.1 million in sales during the quarter. We are excited to have our most recent acquisition, Sullivan Environmental Technologies, as a part of the DXP family. Sullivan Environmental will provide additional sales within the water and wastewater platform and provide margin enhancement and product and end- market diversification.
We welcome you, Sullivan, and we're excited to have you as a part of DXP. Average daily sales for the third quarter were $6.1 million per day versus $5.8 million per day in Q2. Adjusting for acquisitions, average daily sales were $5.8 million per day for the third quarter. That said, the average daily sales trends during the quarter went from $5.5 million per day in July to $6.8 million per day in September, reflecting a typical quarter-end push. In terms of our business segments, Supply Chain Services grew sales 68.3% year-over-year this year. Excuse me, 68.3% year-over-year. This was followed by Innovative Pumping Solutions growing 62% year-over-year. Excluding acquisitions, IPS grew 55.2%, or sales increased $20.1 million.
This was followed Service Centers growing 22.4% year-over-year. Excluding acquisition sales Service Centers grew 16% to $33.9 million, excuse me. In terms of Service Centers, regions within Service Centers business segment, which experienced sales growth year-over-year include Ohio River Valley, South Central, Texas Gulf Coast, South Atlantic, and North Texas. Key products and end markets driving the sales performance include air compressors, rotating equipment, and water and wastewater, food and beverage, mining, municipal, air, transportation, and specialty chemicals. Supply Chain Services performance reflects an increase in key existing food and beverage and energy contracts, as well as the addition of a large diversified chemical customer that we mentioned in Q2 and that began to ramp in Q1. This customer contributed $16.5 million in sales during the quarter.
In terms of Innovative Pumping Solutions, we continued to experience increases in the backlog. Our Q3 average backlog grew 6% over our Q2 average backlog and is ahead of our 2017 average backlog and down 6% from the 2015 average backlog. The conclusion here is that we are now trending meaningfully above 2016 and 2017- levels, and we are continuing to move towards 2015- levels based upon where our backlog stands today. We are transitioning to strong organic growth within IPS and look to find opportunities in other markets, including biofuels, hydrogen, carbon capture, and sequestration versus our traditional oil and gas, but we do expect energy to continue to contribute meaningfully.
Turning to our gross margins, DXP's total gross margins were 28.8%, 121 basis point decline over 2021. This decline is attributed to the SCS contributing more to the overall DXP quarterly results or business segment mix contribution, as we mentioned in Q2, that historically has been offset by IPS's contribution or higher mix. For the third quarter, SCS was 18% of total sales versus 16% at Q2 and 15% at Q1. IPS for Q3 was 15.2%, Service Centers was 67.2%. Historically, Supply Chain Services has been closer to 14% or less of contribution to DXP. In terms of operating income, combined, all three business segments increased 115 basis points in year-over-year business segment operating income margins or $15.5 million versus 2021.
This was primarily driven by improvements in organic operating income margins within IPS. Total DXP operating income increased 299 basis points versus 2021 to $26.5 million. Our SG&A for the quarter increased $9.3 million from 2021. The increase reflects the growth in the business and associated incentive compensation, as well as DXP investing in its people through merit and pay raises. SG&A as a percent of sales decreased 420 basis points year-over-year to 22% of sales, reflecting the leverage inherent in the business that we mentioned earlier, despite increased operating dollars supporting our growth, cost inflation, and the impact of acquisitions. Turning to EBITDA, Q3 2022 adjusted EBITDA was $34.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 8.9%.
Year-over-year, EBITDA margins increased 239 basis points or $15.6 million. This reflects the fixed cost SG&A leverage we experience as we grow sales. This translated into 2.5x operating leverage. In terms of EPS, our net income for Q3 was $13.2 million. Our earnings per diluted share for Q3 was $0.67 per share versus $0.36 per share last year. Adjusting for a one-time non-cash item, our earnings per diluted share for Q3 was $0.75 per share. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. In terms of working capital, our working capital increased $25.7 million from June to $272.7 million.
As a percentage of last 12 months sales, this amounted to 19.9%. This primarily reflects a $10 million increase in accounts receivable and $12 million increase in inventory and continued investments in our project work activity. Additionally, Sullivan Environmental and other acquisitions contributed $3.3 million of the increase in accounts receivable. As discussed during Q2, we are still at a point where we are in line with our historical averages or range in terms of investing and working capital. We would expect this to level- off as a percentage of last 12 months sales as we onboard some of our recent acquisitions for a full 12 months. In terms of cash, we had $17.1 million in cash on the balance sheet as of September 30th. This is a decrease of $3.6 million compared to the end of Q2.
The reduction was a result of the purchase of Sullivan Environmental, share repurchases, and working capital uses. In terms of project work, activity has increased within IPS, and we experienced a $4.5 million increase in costs and estimated profits in excess of billings over Q2 and have increased $12.9 million since Q4 of last year. In terms of CapEx, CapEx in the third quarter was $1.6 million, or an increase of $471,000 compared to Q2. While we do expect CapEx to pick up in Q4 2022 and into 2023, our year-to-date CapEx of $3.4 million is minimal and continues to reflect our ability to control maintenance and capital expenditures with increases primarily driven by strategic investments. As we move forward, we will continue to invest in the business and focus on growth. Turning to free cash flow.
Free cash flow for the year is -$1.2 million. This primarily reflects significant investments in inventory and project work, as mentioned earlier, throughout the year. Specifically, inventory has increased $30.3 million since December of last year, while our project investments have increased $12.9 million. As we increase project activities in our IPS business, we will experience higher uses of cash, which we are seeing, but this likely will be a little bit more sporadic as we continue to manage through supply chain delays. Return on invested capital or ROIC at the end of the third quarter was 25% and should continue to improve as we drive margins and operating leverage and improve our run rate EBITDA.
As of September 30th, our fixed charge coverage ratio was 4.2 : 1, and our secured leverage ratio was 2.86 : 1, with a covenant EBITDA for the last 12 months of $122 million. Total debt outstanding on September 30th was $364.8 million. In terms of liquidity, as of the quarter, we were drawn on our ABL at $40.6 million, with $91.7 million of availability. In terms of acquisitions, we closed on the acquisition of Sullivan Environmental Technologies during the quarter, and we're excited to have Sullivan with the DXP team, as I mentioned earlier, and we look forward to them reporting with us for the full quarter of Q4.
Sullivan provides DXP with a leading platform within the municipal and industrial water and wastewater industries in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Welcome to DXP, Sullivan. DXP's acquisition pipeline continues to grow, and the market continues to present compelling opportunities. While the backdrop may seem challenging, we are finding that there are no shortage of opportunities, and sellers are reasonable when it comes to valuation. Our acquisition strategy has created significant value for DXP, enhancing our end markets, margins, and DXP's cash flow profile. Looking forward, we expect this to continue into 2023. Regarding capital allocation, our primary goal is to invest in our business, including the execution of our acquisition strategy. We are also committed to maintaining a conservative balance sheet as we demonstrated by a target leverage ratio of 3.5 x or less.
To the extent we have excess capital after achieving these objectives, the share repurchase program will provide us the mechanism to return capital to our shareholders. During the quarter, we repurchased $3.4 million in shares, and year to date for the nine months, we have purchased $18.5 million, including open market purchases and private negotiated transactions. In summary, our priority from a balance sheet perspective is to maintain our financial flexibility and strength without sacrificing long-term growth or market opportunities. As we have outlined this morning, we have outperformed the market, delivering impressive sales growth and margin strength while achieving record sales results, all while de-leveraging the balance sheet. Our resilient and critical MRO and supply chain solutions, combined with our project capabilities and exposure to the sustainable secular trends, including water and wastewater and various sustainable energy markets, will drive our future sales and profitability.
We are excited because there is still substantial value embedded in DXP. We look forward with great confidence to a future of sustained growth and market outperformance. Now I'll turn the call over for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. The first question is from Tommy Moll with Stephens. Your line is open.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions.
Morning, Tommy.
I wanted to start at the top of the P&L on your daily sales. Can you give us any context on what October looked like? As we look toward November and December, based on your commentary, it sounds like, ex oil and gas, that revenue might continue to trend higher. You've got the seasonality or the typical seasonality in that oil and gas market. I wonder, on a consolidated basis, how do you see that daily sales progressing through this quarter?
Yeah. I'll jump in there, Tommy, and then maybe David can give a little color just from a market perspective.
The trend, and I'll just really go through the quarter and then to October, you know, it was $5.5 million per day, $5.9 million, $6.8 million in September, and then October, another $5.8 million. You know, our October sales per business day is up 25.1% on a comparative year-over-year basis. You know, we're seeing the trends continue early on here in the fourth quarter. But you had some other comments. I don't know if David wanted to jump in there around oil and gas and some other things, so.
Well, sure. Oil and gas, you either head to the end of the year and people have run out of budget money, or they haven't, and they want to spend it. Then you have the holidays, and so, I mean, that's kind of how the oil and gas piece works. The general industrial piece, a lot of manufacturers will shut down a week during the holidays, etc. You have some softness there. You have a little less days. You have manufacturing probably taking advantage of or maybe not. I mean, they may be so far behind on their deliveries because of the supply chain problems that they don't take the usual week or two off. I'm not sure how that's gonna play out.
I do know on oil and gas that people are, at these prices, they're trying to produce as much oil and gas as they can. Doesn't mean they're drilling a kajillion holes or, you know, Halliburton and Schlumberger are doing a lot of work around workovers and ducts and etc. That's kind of normal stuff. I mean, in general, oil and gas is gonna be a good market for the rest of this quarter, really, in my opinion, and through all of next year. I don't know if I answered your question or not, but that's my attempt.
No, it's helpful context. I appreciate it. If we just move down the P&L, I would ask you for your outlook on fourth quarter gross margin or SG&A as a percent of revenue, although understanding it's hard to pin down the revenue, there may be some uncertainty there. Maybe we could just start with any qualitative headwinds or tailwinds for gross margin or G&A in third quarter, and the extent to which those would improve or get a little worse as you go into fourth quarter.
Yeah, Tommy, I'll jump on that one. I mean, I don't know if they're necessarily headwinds, but we've been kind of really communicating it since Q2. We've got a significant, you know, diversified chemical customer within our Supply Chain Services segment that the overall profitability, including SG&A cost, is in line with where we're typically at. But from a gross margin perspective, it's put a little bit of weight on the downside to our gross margins. They're obviously a significant sales volume customer too, so it's a combination of the both, and that's what's led to the business segment mix contribution kind of shifting here on us. You know, we're always looking for more opportunities with both our existing customers and new customers.
Net overall profitability, you know, is in line for the segment, but from a gross margin perspective, kind of puts a little weight on our gross margins. That said, I don't think we'll continue to see too much further drag unless their sales just extremely ramped up in Q4, where we're close to full- ramp at this point.
Yeah, we do a good job. Somebody calls us today, they need a pump, we use replacement costs and mark it up our normal markup, and that transaction happens just fine. There's a little bit of fixed costs. We try to avoid those and go with a fixed margin. There's still some lag between when the supplier gives us a price increase and when we get you know, the price increase passed on to the customer. There's a little lag there. On projects that we quote, and we quote a $4 million project, and we get the order, you know, we have the right to not take the order, obviously, if its pricing has gone really astray.
If pricing is pretty normal, then it takes six months to build out the order, maybe longer. Labor costs go up. Things, you know, a lot of the stuff we didn't order everything exactly the day we got the order, goes up. There's always some lag. I think the difference between the 30% gross profit margins, which would be more of our targeted gross profit margin number, which is what we did last year at this time, and the 28.9% or 28.8% or wherever we are today, is because of those reasons we just listed.
On to cash flow. You called out a couple of areas of investment year to date in terms of inventory and receivables that have impacted the performance there. I guess to start, just versus your expectations, how have operating cash flows progressed? As you look into Q4, do you see any potential for release of cash from inventory or receivables or a pathway to the black, so to speak, on the operating cash flow line this quarter?
Yeah, Tommy, I'm gonna give you a high-level answer here, and then I'll let Kent deal with the details. Realistically, if we're growing organically 10% and therefore receivables and inventory go up some percentage of that growth, normally we're in the working capital's 15% to a high watermark would be 19%, 15%-19% of that sales growth. What happens when we grow 35% organically? Well, it takes more working capital. You know, within a short period of time, you're gonna have to increase your inventory levels to support the greater sales number, and obviously receivables goes up. Then Kent pointed out that we get progress billings on projects, and that on those projects, of course, our customer doesn't wanna pay us.
Of course, we wanna be paid more than our cost. You know, we want the customer to fund the cost of those projects. Somewhere in the middle is what ends up getting negotiated on the terms and conditions of those contracts. When you look at IPS, it is coming out of a buyer's market. You know, sales were down substantially because of oil and gas and etc . Yeah, have we, you know, have we let the customer beat us up a little bit on cash terms? Yes. Will that continue going forward? No, not as soon as we have a seller's market. We'll get real aggressive.
I don't think there's anything that in the fourth quarter is gonna sit there and say that we're just gonna have a whole bunch of money fall in our lap because that's I don't know what Kent thinks, but I don't, I'm not sure that's gonna happen because we need the inventory. We turn our inventory 7x . And then receivables collection, and then we'll do the best we can to improve progress billings. But really, it all gets down to fundamentally, if you're growing 30%-35%, you're gonna spend more working capital.
Yeah. Tommy, the only thing I'd add there is a couple of things. You know, our cash from operating activities was really actually positive in Q1 into Q2. We produced free cash flow in Q1 and Q2, which was a little bit an aberration from our historical trends, where we're typically free cash flow negative in Q1 and Q2, and then it's you know Q3 and Q4. Point being is I kind of mentioned it in my comments is I think you know it's project work activity, it's the sporadic nature of the supply chains. There's a lot of things factors contributing to it. So in net I think hey you know will we collect some cash in the fourth quarter too? That? Yes. Will it be larger than normal?
I don't think so. You know, I think we're always working to collect on those projects that David's talking about. We've made some investments in inventory. You know, as we move through the Q4, some of that naturally slows just from a seasonal perspective, but then we're gonna be quickly going into Q1 again next year.
Really to emphasize one point too is that, you know, part of the eliminating risk in our business is the fact that when sales go down, well, then receivables and inventory go down, and we generate a ton of cash flow. I'm not sure we want that. I think growing 30% is more fun than going down. When we're growing 30%, we're gonna use a lot of our cash for organic growth.
Right.
Yeah, we are.
Well, maybe one more on M&A. Kent, I think it was your comment about a growing pipeline there. I'm curious whether you can put any bands around the sizes of potential deals. You've, in terms of number of deals, been quite active. In terms of size of deals, we're, I think, probably trending below the historic average for DXP. I wondered if you could characterize the pipeline as it sits today.
Yeah. You know, I would say the pipeline sits in a few buckets. One is, you know. David mentioned in his comments. I mentioned, you know, around Sullivan, but, you know, we have a pocket or a pool of water, wastewater transactions, which I think you kinda hinted at. On average, those transactions have been smaller than I think historically for DXP, meaning I'll call it, you know, $10 million or less on average. We've had some one or two sizable ones in there, but on average, you're talking in terms of revenue, you know, $10 million or less, and then we have some air compressors, which we've done here more recently as well. Those transactions have been.
Some of them have been our average transaction size, some of them have been a little bit larger. I think you'll continue to see that as well. The last bucket is probably, you know, we opportunistically are also looking at some automation and some other things, and some kinda closer to the Bearings and PT space. Once again, some of those are much bigger than our average, and some of those are, you know, in line with our average. Point being, it's like I said, I see a fulsome pipeline, you know, and I see some opportunities out there for DXP. You know, we've been able to get reasonable valuations.
Yeah, you know, we look to kinda push into 2023 with, you know, us closing on hopefully some acquisitions and kinda keeping that ball moving forward. Once again, all assuming valuations are reasonable, we're disciplined around valuation, and, you know, it makes sense for DXP.
I appreciate all the time, and I'll turn it back.
Again, as a reminder, please press star one if you would like to ask a question. It appears that we have no further questions. I'll turn it over to David Little for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thanks everybody for your participation today. I think DXP is really at an interesting reflection point where we have a tremendous amount of organic initiatives that we're pretty excited about. We continue to do what we've always done, which is, you know, our founding was selling pumps, but there's a lot else that we can do in terms of providing products that require technology and that require a level of expertise, which we love. We're pretty excited about the transition that DXP is moving towards the diversity of the markets. You know, we're in energy, but it's moving towards biofuels and storage, and carbon capture and some really neat stuff. That's exciting for us.
We see energy and its relevance improving. We're also in the utility market. You know, water and wastewater is a big utility market that is important to all of us, and we're excited about that. The industrials, normal manufacturing, chemical, aerospace, et cetera, all those markets seem essential to us and will, I think, serve us well. I think, we're obviously the Fed's trying to slow down the economy and that's probably gonna happen from an overall perspective. When we look at the things we're doing, we think we're gonna fare really well. With that, again, thank you for your participation. Thank you for your understanding of our story, and y'all have a great day.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.