AIT vs DXPE: Which Is the Better Buy in 2026?

Same yardstick, side by side (as of September 2026). Valuation lined up like this is most meaningful for two names in the same corner of the market, which these are. Figures are approximate; verify before investing.

The metrics above tell you which is the marginally better business. The bigger risk for most people is not picking the slightly worse stock, it is over-concentrating. AIT and DXPE share themes, so owning both, or adding either to what you already hold, can quietly push a large share of your portfolio into one bet.

This is the part a generic comparison page cannot answer, because it depends on what you own. Connect your brokerage and Walnut shows your real, combined AIT and DXPE exposure, flags overlap with your existing positions, and tells you if adding one would tip you past a concentration you are comfortable with, read-only by default, with your login staying at your broker. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

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.

Full AIT guide

DXP Enterprises distributes maintenance, repair and operating (MRO) products and engineers pumping systems for industrial customers, a business whose roots go back to 1908. It runs three segments. Service Centers is the branch network that sells bearings, seals, safety products, hoses and rotating equipment out of local locations, and it produced about $368 million of the $576.5 million booked in the second quarter of 2026. Innovative Pumping Solutions designs and fabricates custom pump packages and skids for water and wastewater, fire protection, data centers, HVAC and energy customers, and it contributed about $143 million. Supply Chain Services runs procurement and inventory programs inside customer plants and added about $66 million. The mix matters because the three lines have very different growth and margin profiles, and the fast-growing one is now the engineered-systems business rather than the branch network.

Full DXPE guide

Both fit overlapping themes, but they are not interchangeable. The useful comparison is which set of drivers and risks you want exposure to.

• AIT drivers: Mix shift toward Engineered Solutions; Consolidating a fragmented market.
• DXPE drivers: The water and wastewater pivot; Innovative Pumping Solutions as the growth engine.

A faster-growing, richer-valued name usually swings harder, so it suits a longer horizon and a higher tolerance for volatility; a steadier, more cash-generative business suits a more conservative or income-minded investor. The honest test is which set of risks you could hold through a drawdown: 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. For DXPE, dXP sells into industrial capital and maintenance budgets, so revenue moves with the industrial cycle and with energy and petrochemical spending in particular.

Growth-minded investors who believe the theme has years to run tend to accept the richer multiple for more upside; value-minded investors lean toward the cheaper forward earnings and steadier profile. Pick AIT if you believe its drivers more; DXPE if you believe its. Many investors hold both, but since they share themes, that is a concentrated bet, not diversification. Decide deliberately and check overlap. For the full detail, see the AIT and DXPE guides.

AIT. 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.

DXPE. DXP prices well above where industrial distributors historically trade, at roughly 30 times trailing earnings and around 11 to 12 times enterprise value to trailing adjusted EBITDA, against roughly $119 million of trailing free cash flow. That premium reflects three things the market has re-rated: organic growth in the low double digits, a margin structure improving with the engineered-systems mix, and an end-market shift toward water that carries lower cyclicality than DXP's energy-levered past. It also means the stock now depends on the acquisition cadence and the pumping backlog holding up, because the multiple no longer assumes a distributor's ordinary growth rate.

Headline figures (approximate, August 2026): AIT shows 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; DXPE shows revenue (ttm) ~$2.14 billion, q2 2026 sales growth ~15.6% year over year to ~$576.5 million (organic ~11.1%), adjusted ebitda (q2 2026) ~$70.4 million, a ~12.2% margin, up ~22.8%, diluted eps ~$1.76 in Q2 2026, ~$5.68 trailing twelve months.

AIT and DXPE are related but distinct: same themes, different businesses and risks. Neither wins in the abstract; the right pick is whichever thesis you actually believe, sized so you are not over-concentrated in one theme. Walnut can show your combined AIT and DXPE exposure against your real portfolio. It is not an investment adviser.