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At the end of the third quarter, the company operated 2,295 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. "This is an important data point for investors to gauge progress within the all-important retail channel, particularly as Home Depot reinvests back into the stores with departmental resets," Postol said. While bolstering sales, those expenses along with surging costs of everything from fuel to wages led to a 35-basis point decline in fourth-quarter gross margins to 33.2%. The retailer also announced that it will make permanent the temporary compensation programs it has implemented for frontline employees during the pandemic. The move will result in $1 billion of additional expenses annually.

The stock has tumbled 28.7% year to date through Monday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.49%has shed 11.3%. "We will continue to provide you with retail operating metrics, including sales per square foot and weighted average weekly store sales." Same-store sales rose 24.5% in the fourth quarter ended Jan.31, beating analysts' average estimate of an 18.9% increase,according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Home Depot reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter with strong comparable-store sales.
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HD, -1.86%rallied 3.2% in premarket trading Tuesday, after the home improvement retailer reported fiscal first-quarter earnings that rose above expectations, surprise growth in same-store sales and raised its full-year outlook. Net income for the quarter to May 1 rose to $4.23 billion, or $4.09 a share, from $4.15 billion, or $3.86 a share, in the year-ago period, beating the FactSet consensus of $3.69. Sales grew 3.8% to $38.91 billion, well above the FactSet consensus of $36.71 billion, while same-store sales increased 2.2% compared with expectations of a 2.9% decline. "Fiscal 2022 is off to a strong start as we delivered the highest first quarter sales in company history," said Chief Executive Ted Decker.

Parkev Tatevosian has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Tomi Kilgore is MarketWatch's deputy investing and corporate news editor and is based in New York. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. The latest figures on consumer confidence will be released Tuesday by the Conference Board, a non-profit business research group.
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Does the idea of hitting up family or friends for cash make you cringe? You may be forgetting that the people close to you might actually be happy to loan you money. During the question and answer segment of Home Depot's conference call, Sanford Bernstein analyst Colin McGranahan voiced the sentiments of many on Wall Street. Get stock recommendations, portfolio guidance, and more from The Motley Fool's premium services. "We don't see anything that we would point to and say that's the impact of Delta, not yet," he said, as the company did not provide a full-year outlook.
And in this most recent quarter ended Jan. 30, elevated inflation helped increase sales totals at Home Depot. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers.
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The Home Depot reported a strong quarter as it continues to benefit from consumers’ increased spending on home improvement projects amid the pandemic. Some analysts think the move to not report same-store sales shows that the company's sales were weak for the period, and will stay that way. The change comes as the retailer posted a 19% jump in first-quarter profits, but sales came in below what analysts had expected, on average. Home Depot's shares have climbed about 50% since the end of February 2020, riding a more than $40 billion jump in sales during the period as stuck-at-home Americans used their time and savings on do-it-yourself home projects. The industry has been a surprising winner from the pandemic as millions of consumers spend more time at home.
Underlying the increase in spending, homeowners feel good about their home and its value. The number of homes available for sale remains near record lows, and that is driving up home prices. Coupled with that trend, people are doing more things at home since the onset of the pandemic, like working, learning, and exercising. That's giving rise to more wear and tear, more expansion and repurposing, and altogether increased importance of the home. But he added that he "highly" encourages the company to reinstate same-store sales reporting. "Acknowledgement that they would like investors to concentrate equally between retail and Home Depot Supply without simply concentrating on retail same-store sales is a legitimate request," he wrote in a note to clients.
Sales Manager (w/m/d)
Home Depot has spent about $1.7 billion on temporary pay and benefits so far in 2020. Has been looking for ways to drive profits even as it slows store openings, like expanding its supply business and beefing up services. Home Depot has rolled out measures such as chartering its own cargo ship and using air freight to move in-demand goods to beat supply chain disruptions and shipping delays. The company expects operating margins to be flat in 2022, assuming inflation will not get any worse.

U.S. same-store sales at Home Depot climbed 3.4% in the second quarter - the smallest increase in two years, and missed analysts' estimates of a 4.9% rise, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Overall, Home Depot's net sales in Q4 increased by 10.7% year over year to reach $35.7 billion. That's the second straight quarter of accelerating revenue growth.
The home improvement retailer experienced a surge in sales at the pandemic onset that slowed down in the quarter ended July as it was going up against tough comparisons. But these latest figures show growth is moving higher again, despite the tough comparisons. For the three months ended Feb. 2, Home Depot Inc. earned $2.48 billion, or $2.28 per share. That's better than the per-share earnings of $2.11 projected by industry analysts, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research. A year earlier the Atlanta company earned $2.34 billion, or $2.09 per share. Home Depot’s U.S. same-store sales surged 24.6% in the quarter.

By measuring the sales movement in the stores that have an operating history, and stripping out new store openings and other expansions, industry watchers can better gauge the health of a particular retailer. After all this, Home Depot is trading at a forward price to earnings of 19.75, down from the nearly 27 it was selling for at its recent peak. The stock is not expensive, but the most cautious investors can wait to observe how consumer behavior evolves over the next few quarters before adding shares of Home Depot.
Overall sales rose a higher-than-expected 10.7% in the fourth quarter to $35.72 billion, while earnings per share of $3.21 topped estimates of $3.18. In Q4, the average customer purchase was 12.3% higher than the same quarter the previous year. The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to several supply and demand imbalances worldwide, which in turn has led to rising prices. Indeed, inflation was the primary reason for higher customer-purchase totals. Commodity categories alone accounted for 185 basis points of the increase.