Applied Industrial Technologies (AIT) Stock Price & How to Invest

Applied Industrial Technologies has been distributing bearings and power transmission components since 1923 (it traded as Bearings Inc. until 1997) and now operates in two segments. Service Center, about 66% of fiscal 2025 sales, is the maintenance, repair and operations business: a network of local branches across North America, Australia and New Zealand stocking bearings, motors, belting, drives, couplings, pumps, hoses and filtration for customers' existing equipment. Engineered Solutions, the other 34%, is the more technical half, covering fluid power systems, flow control, automation design and integration, and it carries higher growth and a different competitive set. The pitch to customers is expertise rather than price: engineers, fluid power specialists and fabrication shops that keep production lines running. Revenue is heavily domestic, with roughly $4.0 billion of fiscal 2025's $4.56 billion coming from the United States, and no single customer accounts for more than 5% of sales.

Fiscal years end June 30, so the September 2025 through June 2026 stretch is fiscal 2026. Through the first nine months of it, sales reached ~$3.61 billion against ~$3.34 billion a year earlier, with net income of ~$296 million and diluted EPS of ~$7.79. The March 2026 quarter showed sales up 7.3% year over year and 6.0% organically, with Engineered Solutions growing 9.3% organically versus 4.2% at Service Center, the mix shift management has been working toward. Management raised fiscal 2026 guidance in April 2026 to EPS of $10.64 to $10.75 on sales growth of 7.2% to 7.7%. The balance sheet carries ~$365 million of debt against ~$172 million of cash, leaving leverage well under one turn of EBITDA, and the company bought back ~$236 million of stock in those nine months before authorizing another 3.0 million shares. Fourth quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 results are scheduled for August 13, 2026.

The business is cyclical in a way that no amount of execution removes: sales follow industrial production, capacity utilization and customer capital budgets, and end markets such as oil and gas, mining, primary metals and forest products can turn sharply. Trade policy and tariffs are an explicit uncertainty management folded into its own fourth quarter outlook, and they cut both ways, since inflation can help distributor revenue while compressing volumes. LIFO accounting on US inventories makes gross margin lumpy, with $5.6 million of LIFO expense in the March 2026 quarter against $2.2 million a year earlier. Valuation is the most concrete risk: at roughly 34 times trailing earnings and near the top of a 52-week range of ~$238 to ~$363, the stock trades well above the multiple industrial distributors historically commanded, which leaves little cushion if organic growth reverts to the low single digits it ran at in fiscal 2024 and 2025. Acquisition-led strategies also carry integration and goodwill risk, and Applied already carries ~$705 million of goodwill and ~$323 million of intangibles against ~$1.86 billion of equity.

6 analysts publish price targets on AIT, averaging $359.50 against a $359.90 price as of August 2026, or -0.1%. The published targets run from $317.00 to $380.00, a narrow spread, and the ratings split 6 buy, 2 hold, 0 sell. Over the last six months there have been 4 raises and 0 cuts among the published actions. A price target is what an analyst published on a date, not a prediction, and sell-side ratings skew positive across the whole market.

Read the full AIT forecast and price target for the target table, the recent rating actions by firm, and how the consensus has shifted.

We give no verdict on Applied Industrial Technologies. Both cases are real, which is why the question is contested at all, so here is the strongest version of each.

The case for buying. Mix shift toward Engineered Solutions. The Engineered Solutions segment grew 9.3% organically in the March 2026 quarter, more than double the Service Center rate, and has climbed from ~32% of sales in fiscal 2023 to ~34% in fiscal 2025. The most optimistic published target, $380.00, assumes this works close to its best case.

The case against. The business is cyclical in a way that no amount of execution removes: sales follow industrial production, capacity utilization and customer capital budgets, and end markets such as oil and gas, mining, primary metals and forest products can turn sharply. The most pessimistic target, $317.00, is roughly what AIT is worth if this bites instead.

Read the full bull and bear case on AIT, including what would have to change to break either one. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

A simple financial snapshot. These are approximations and refresh quarterly; for current figures see Applied Industrial Technologies's investor relations page or your broker.

• Revenue (TTM): ~$4.84B, up ~7.5% year over year
• Net income (TTM): ~$404M, ~8.3% net margin
• Diluted EPS (TTM): ~$10.58
• Market cap: ~$13.3B at ~$360 per share
• P/E: ~34x trailing, ~31x forward
• Balance sheet: ~$172M cash against ~$365M debt (net debt ~$194M)

Enterprise value works out near $13.5 billion, or roughly 23 times trailing EBITDA and ~2.8 times sales, a premium multiple for a distributor growing mid single digits organically. Fiscal 2026 guidance of $10.64 to $10.75 in EPS implies a fourth quarter of $2.85 to $2.96, with those results due August 13, 2026. The dividend of $0.51 per quarter (~$2.04 annualized) yields roughly 0.6%, so essentially all of the return case rests on earnings growth and multiple maintenance rather than income.

If you want AIT exposure as part of a larger bundle rather than directly, these ETFs hold it meaningfully. Weights are approximate and refresh quarterly.

Other names that sit close to AIT: same theme, named as a direct competitor, or held beside it in the same funds. Each entry says which. Worth a look if you are thinking about diversification within a thesis rather than concentration on one ticker.

There are three common ways to get AIT exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) directly at any major broker. Hold an ETF that includes it (SDVY), which spreads the position across many companies. Or build it into a focused thematic portfolio, so AIT sits alongside other stocks that express the same thesis.

Walnut takes the portfolio route. Describe a thesis where AIT fits (for example “AI infrastructure” or “dividend-growth large-caps”) and the AI proposes 5 to 6 constituents with target weights. You review the plan and fund it through your own broker when you're ready.

New to this? Start with how to invest in stocks, see how to analyze a stock with AI, or compare the best AI stock analyzers.

Applied Industrial is a low-leverage, steadily compounding industrial distributor whose mix is shifting toward higher-growth engineered work, priced near record highs at roughly 34 times trailing earnings.

Whether AIT is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, what would have to go right, and the risks in is AIT a buy or a sell?, and where the stock could go from here in the AIT stock forecast.

For income investors, whether AIT pays a dividend and how the payout looks is covered in does AIT pay a dividend? And to weigh AIT against a peer, read the full side-by-side comparisons: AIT vs FAST and AIT vs GPC.