After a century in business, a piping distributor has reached a new digital milestone. MRC Global Inc. distributes pipes, valves and fittings (PVF) and other products and services to the energy industry.

For the third quarter ended Sept. 30, B2B ecommerce sales for MRC Global Inc. now account for 49.6% of all sales. That’s a 43% increase from Q3 2021.

MRC grew $904.0 million in Q3 total sales. That’s up 32% from $685 million in the third quarter of the prior year.

Based on 49.6% of sales being digital — vs. 43% in Q3 2021 — Digital Commerce 360 projects ecommerce revenue in Q3 grew year over year to $448.3 million. That’s a 52.2% increase from $294.6 million. Net income was $24.0 million vs. a loss of $11 million in Q3 2021.

“We have seen a remarkable transformation in our business in recent years as our revenue sources have shifted dramatically to become more diversified and stable,” CEO Rob Saltiel told analysts on a recent earnings call.

Now that ecommerce totals half of all revenue, MRC will continue to invest and expand ecommerce, he told analysts.

“We continue to invest significantly in our digital strategy and moving more of our commerce to the digital realm,” Saltiel said. “This isn’t just a more efficient way for our customers to buy from us or for us to serve those customers, but we also have an opportunity to engage with our customers in a more meaningful way — when they get on the MRC Go website and they’re making purchases either through the site itself or through the punchout through their own ERP system.”

Ecommerce provides strategic benefit to MRC in ways beyond just digital sales.

“We have an opportunity to really engage with the customer around the products and services they’re purchasing, the status of those orders and even look more predictably to what they may need going forward and be ahead of that,” he told analysts. “Some of our digital benefits include the opportunity to centralize inventory. You have fewer piles of inventory you can work from and obviously that reduces working capital costs and increases working capital efficiency.”