What the future holds for QXO

By Emma Peterson.  

Matt Fassler, QXO’s chief strategy officer, shares what their acquisition of Beacon means for the future.  

It’s been over half a year since QXO acquired Beacon in an industry-shaking deal. To get more insight into the strategy behind this move and what the path ahead looks like, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Matt Fassler for an episode of Read Listen Watch (RLW)®. Matt is currently the chief strategy officer at QXO and was one of the founding members of the organization..  

Matt highlighted why roofing attracted QXO, a company that, while having previous experience in trucking and freight brokerage, had never been a part of the roofing industry prior. He shared, “80% or so of the business is repair, remodel, as opposed to new construction. This work is not optional. This work is essential and for that reason it's proven resilient through all economic cycles. It’s an attractive industry.”  

As for choosing Beacon in particular, Matt pointed to their powerful and organic growth capabilities. He explained, “Beacon grew its revenue organically for the past 21 years. That includes points in time during the financial crisis like COVID. Further, they are very well positioned. Beacon had  over 110,000 customers and more than a million deliveries annually when we joined them.” 

 In return, QXO is hoping to drive value both for the roofing industry and all the other markets QXO is already a part of. Matt explained, “Through the Beacon acquisition, we are able to help all of our stakeholders and drive value across our ecosystem...We can do this with warehouse management tools and route optimization. We use technology again to understand prices in the market and interface more efficiently with our vendors. We are going to centralize procurement, introduce-leading e-commerce and inventory visibility and more.” 

Looking ahead, Matt shared that QXO’s goals are a combo of meeting existing customers where they are and building out to meet them in new places. He elaborated, “Right now, the majority of the business is transacted in a terrestrial way. What we want to do is build out an online interface for some of it. We were talking yesterday at our company meeting, sharing some of our internal thinking that there's no reason why the business wouldn't be at least 50% sourced online.” To be clear, fulfillment would largely stay the same in this vision of online business transactions. What would change is the customer experience. Having access to online or ecommerce platforms helps contractors make their workflows more efficient and adaptable, and it removes the physical limitations of having to visit a brick and mortar location.  

At the end of the day, this is just one example of how QXO’s plans to build value for all professionals in the industry through their acquisition of Beacon. Matt added, “Ultimately, everything we plan to do is in service of the customer. Whether it enables us to take costs out for them, gives them better visibility, gives them better speed, gives them better on-time in full delivery...that’s always the goal.” 

Read the transcript, Listen to the podcast or Watch the recording to learn more about QXO and their acquisition of Beacon.