LAKE FOREST, Ill. (AP) _ W.W. Grainger Inc. (GWW) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter net income of $281 million.

On a per-share basis, the Lake Forest, Illinois-based company said it had profit of $5.44.

The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $5.25 per share.

The seller of maintenance and other supplies posted revenue of $3.36 billion in the period, also surpassing Street forecasts. Six analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $3.28 billion.

For the year, the company reported profit of $1.03 billion, or $19.84 per share. Revenue was reported as $13.02 billion.

W.W. Grainger expects full-year earnings to be $23.50 to $25.50 per share, with revenue in the range of $14.1 billion to $14.5 billion.

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on GWW at https://www.zacks.com/ap/GWW

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