Home Depot Beats By Five Cents a Share

Today it was Home Depot’s (HD) turn to report earnings and the company did very well:

Home Depot reported a profit of $725 million, or 43 cents a share for the May 2nd-ended quarter, up from $514 million, or 30 cents, a year earlier. Excluding items, earnings rose to 45 cents from 35 cents.
Revenue jumped 4.3% to $16.86 billion, or 5.7% excluding the impact of Expo stores, which Home Depot shut down last year, from the year-earlier results. Same-store sales rose 4.8%, the second consecutive quarterly increase after 14 quarters of declines.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had most recently forecast earnings of 40 cents on $16.37 billion in revenue.

That’s an impressive earnings beat. Compared with Lowe’s (LOW), Home Depot has been able to hold the line on margins. The big number in retail is same-store sales. At Lowe’s, same-store sales rose by 2.4% while they were up 3.3% at Home Depot.
Home Depot also raised its full-year EPS guidance to $1.88. The stock is a bit pricey here. I think the market expects to see more big earnings surprises this year.

Posted by on May 18th, 2010 at 9:12 am


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