Home Depot Inc (HD) — Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Isabel, and good morning, everyone. Sales for the third quarter were $41.4 billion, up 2.8% from the same period last year. Comp sales increased 0.2% from the same period last year and comps in the U.S. increased 0.1%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $3.74 in the third quarter compared to $3.78 in the third quarter last year. In local currency, Canada and Mexico posted positive comps. Our results missed our expectations, primarily due to the lack of storms in the third quarter, which resulted in greater-than-expected pressure in certain categories. Additionally, while underlying demand in the business remained relatively stable sequentially, an expected increase in demand in the third quarter did not materialize. We believe that consumer uncertainty and continued pressure in housing are disproportionately impacting home improvement demand. Today, we've revised our guidance for fiscal 2025, which Richard will take you through in a moment. We remain focused on controlling what we can control. Our teams are executing at a high level, and we believe we are growing market share. We continue to invest across the business, supporting our associates and delivering the value proposition expected by our customers. In September, SRS completed the acquisition of GMS, a leading distributor of specialty building products, including drywall, ceiling and steel framing related to remodeling and construction projects. GMS further enhances SRS' position as a leading multi-category building materials distributor, bringing differentiated capabilities, product categories and customer relationships that are highly complementary to SRS' existing business. We could not be more excited to welcome GMS to the family and look forward to bringing a truly differentiated value proposition to our Pro customers. We're excited to see many of you in person in a few weeks at our investor conference at the New York Stock Exchange on December 9. We will update you on our strategic initiatives, our unique positioning in the marketplace, our investments and the traction we are seeing with our customers as we continue to position ourselves to win market share in both the near and long term. In closing, I would like to thank our store associates, merchants, supply chain teams and vendor partners who continue to take care of our customers and execute at a high level. With that, let me turn the call over to Ann.

Thanks, Ted, and good morning, everyone. Our associates did an incredible job focusing on our customers and delivering exceptional customer service in our stores during the quarter. We continue to lean in on initiatives that help our associates do their jobs more effectively while also driving productivity in our operations. I'm going to highlight our progress across a number of initiatives that have helped improve the associate experience and are resulting in a better customer experience and increased customer satisfaction. Last year, we rolled out our freight flow application to all stores, which has improved our freight processes and driven efficiency in all operations. This initiative has significantly improved our cartons per hour metric, resulting in greater efficiency in our onload and pack out process. We also continue to focus on on-shelf availability and through computer vision and Sidekick, we have reached record in-stock and on-shelf availability levels. Lastly, our faster fulfillment efforts leveraging both our stores and distribution centers that you've heard about over the last few quarters have driven an over 400 basis point increase in our customer satisfaction scores. In addition, we continue to focus on our Pro ecosystem, maturing the new capabilities we have built for pros working on complex projects while enhancing the tools we have to serve pros. We are pleased with the progress we are seeing as our customers engage with our capabilities. There are 2 new tools we have deployed over the last several months that help us differentiate our offering. The first is a new project planning tool that we launched in September, which allows our pros to create and manage material lift and track orders and deliveries. The second tool, blueprint takeoffs, will transform the way pros plan and prepare for their projects. This new tool leverages advanced AI and proprietary algorithms to deliver accurate blueprint takeoffs and material estimates in record time. Pros can then quickly and easily purchase all materials they need for their project through The Home Depot, simplifying this complex process by going through a single supplier. This technology replaces a manual intensive process that took weeks to complete, increasing accuracy and reliability. Adding this advanced technology to our ecosystem of capabilities to better serve the pro working on complex projects will further enable us to be the one-stop shop for all project needs from initial planning to material delivery, saving our pros time and money. We look forward to seeing you in a few weeks in New York to provide a holistic view of how our full ecosystem is resonating with our pros and allowing us to gain traction and win in the market. With that, let me turn the call over to Billy.

Thank you, Ann, and good morning, everyone. I want to start by also thanking all of our associates and supplier partners for their ongoing commitment to serving our customers and communities. As you heard from Ted, the underlying demand in the quarter was relatively similar to what we saw in the second quarter. However, our results were below our expectations, largely due to a lack of storms relative to historic norms, which most notably impacted areas of the business such as roofing, power generation and plywood to name a few. Turning to our merchandising department comp performance for the third quarter. Nine of our sixteen merchandising departments posted positive comps, including kitchen, bath, outdoor garden, storage, electrical, plumbing, millwork, hardware and appliances. During the third quarter, our comp average ticket increased 1.8% and comp transactions decreased 1.6%. The growth in comp average ticket primarily reflects a greater mix of higher ticket items, customers continuing to trade up for new and innovative products as well as modest price increases. Big ticket comp transactions for those over $1,000 were positive 2.3% compared to the third quarter of last year. We were pleased with the performance we saw in categories such as appliances, portable power and gypsum. However, we continue to see softer engagement in larger discretionary projects where customers typically use financing to fund renovation projects. During the third quarter, both Pro and DIY comp sales were positive and relatively in line with one another. We saw strength across Pro heavy categories like gypsum, insulation, siding and plumbing. In DIY, we saw strength across our seasonal product offerings, including live goods, hardscapes and other garden products. Turning to total company online comp sales. Sales leveraging our digital platforms increased approximately 11% compared to the third quarter of last year. We're excited about the continued success we're seeing across our interconnected platforms. Our faster delivery speeds are resonating with customers and driving greater engagement and sales. We know that as we remove friction from the experience, we see incremental customer engagement leading to greater sales across all points of interaction. During the third quarter, we hosted our annual supplier partnership meeting where we focused on how we will continue to work together to bring the best products to market, deliver innovative solutions that simplify the project and offer great value with best-in-class features and benefits. At the event, we recognized a number of vendors across categories who continue to transform the industry with the innovation they bring to our customers on a daily basis. They include Leedarson, Cobra Tork, Feather River, Milwaukee, RYOBI, Frigidaire, Makita, Traeger and many more. We are proud of the innovation and partnership that our suppliers bring to The Home Depot and the value we're able to offer both our Pro and DIY customers. As we turn our attention to the fourth quarter, we're looking forward to the excitement we will bring with our annual holiday, Black Friday and Gift Center events. In our Gift Center event, we continue to lean into brands that matter most for our customers with our assortment of Milwaukee, RYOBI, Makita, DEWALT, RIDGID, Diablo, Husky and more. We'll have something for everyone, whether it's our wide assortment of cordless RYOBI tools or Milwaukee hand tools. And in appliances for Black Friday, we have exciting offers on LG, Samsung, Bosch, Whirlpool, GE and Frigidaire. Our assortment includes multiple exclusive products like LG stainless steel french door refrigerator with Craft Ice and Frigidaire's new Gallery dishwasher with a wash cycle time of only 50 minutes. This quarter, I'm also excited to announce the addition of PGT Windows to our wide assortment of exclusive retail brands, including American Craftsman and Andersen Windows. PGT's impact-resistant windows are engineered to meet some of the highest performance standards in the industry, reducing storm damage risk, providing energy efficiency, UV protection and sound reduction, and they will be exclusive to The Home Depot in the big box channel. Our merchandising organization remains focused on being our customers' advocate for value. This means continuing to provide a broad assortment of best-in-class products that are in stock and available for our customers. It is the power of our vendor relationships, coupled with our best-in-class merchant organization that allows us to offer our customers the best brands with the most innovation to solve pain points, increase functionality and enhance performance at the best value in the market. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Richard.

Thank you, Billy, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter, total sales were $41.4 billion, an increase of $1.1 billion or approximately 3% from last year. Total sales include approximately $900 million from the recent acquisition of GMS, which represents approximately 8 weeks of sales in the quarter. During the third quarter, our total company comps were positive 0.2% with comps of positive 2% in August, positive 0.5% in September and negative 1.5% in October. Comps in the U.S. were positive 0.1% for the quarter with comps of positive 2.2% in August, positive 0.3% in September and negative 1.7% in October. For the quarter and in local currency, Canada and Mexico posted positive comp. In the third quarter, our gross margin was 33.4%, flat compared to the third quarter of 2024, which was in line with our expectations. During the third quarter, operating expense as a percent of sales increased approximately 55 basis points to 20.5% compared to the third quarter of 2024. Our operating expense included transaction fees related to the acquisition of GMS, but otherwise were in line with our expectations. Our operating margin for the third quarter was 12.9% compared to 13.5% in the third quarter of 2024. In the quarter, pretax intangible asset amortization was $158 million. Excluding the intangible asset amortization in the quarter, our adjusted operating margin for the third quarter was 13.3% compared to 13.8% in the third quarter of 2024. Interest and other expense for the third quarter was $596 million, which is in line with our expectations. In the third quarter, our effective tax rate was 24.3% compared to 24.4% in the third quarter of fiscal 2024. Our diluted earnings per share for the third quarter were $3.62 compared to $3.67 in the third quarter of 2024. Excluding intangible asset amortization, our adjusted diluted earnings per share for the third quarter were $3.74 compared to $3.78 in the third quarter of 2024. During the third quarter, we opened 3 new stores, bringing our total store count to 2,356. At the end of the quarter, merchandise inventories were $26.2 billion, up approximately $2.3 billion compared to the third quarter of 2024, and inventory turns were 4.5x, down from 4.8x last year. Turning to capital allocation. During the third quarter, we invested approximately $900 million back into our business in the form of capital expenditures and we paid approximately $2.3 billion in dividends to our shareholders. Computed on the average of beginning and ending long-term debt and equity for the trailing 12 months, return on invested capital was 26.3%, down from 31.5% in the third quarter of fiscal 2024. Now I will comment on our outlook for fiscal 2025. Today, we are updating our fiscal 2025 guidance to include softer-than-expected results in the third quarter, continued pressure in the fourth quarter from the lack of storm activity, ongoing consumer uncertainty and housing pressure as well as the inclusion of the GMS acquisition into our consolidated results. For fiscal 2025, we expect total sales growth of approximately positive 3% with GMS expected to contribute approximately $2 billion in incremental sales and comp sales growth percent to be slightly positive compared to fiscal 2024. Our gross margin is expected to be approximately 33.2%. Further, we expect operating margin of approximately 12.6% and adjusted operating margin of approximately 13%. Our effective tax rate is targeted at approximately 24.5%. We expect net interest expense of approximately $2.3 billion. We expect our diluted earnings per share to decline approximately 6% compared to fiscal 2024 when comparing the 52 weeks in fiscal 2025 to the 53 weeks in fiscal 2024. And we expect our adjusted diluted earnings per share to decline approximately 5% compared to fiscal 2024 when comparing the 52 weeks in fiscal 2025 to the 53 weeks in fiscal 2024. We plan to continue investing in our business with capital expenditures of approximately 2.5% of sales for fiscal 2025. We believe that we will grow market share in any environment by strengthening our competitive position with our customers and delivering the best customer experience in home improvement. Thank you for your participation in today's call. And Christine, we are now ready for questions.

My first question is more short term on the fourth quarter. So when you guided for the full year after the second quarter, we didn't have GMS in the numbers. And now we do. And then we now know your third quarter came in a little light and that the fourth quarter may be a little lighter on revenue as well. So there's some deleverage. We're having a tough time getting to the full amount of, call it, EBIT dollar shortfall because GMS looks like they made money last year. Are there any expenses that are tied to it? Or how do we think about the deleverage?

Yes. Simeon, thanks for the question. I think you could look at it 2 ways. Let's talk about fiscal year, and let's talk about Q4. So fiscal year, as you know, we've revised our guidance by 40 basis points from 13.4% adjusted operating margin to 13% operating margin. The walk there, let's talk about the most significant item, which is GMS, the inclusion of GMS in our results. If you take their likely impact to 2025 and you add the transaction expenses to it, you're basically at 20 basis points of year-over-year impact to operating margin. You then take into account the decrease in our comp sales from 1 comp to slightly positive. And then we – so that assumption would have obviously deleverage that we've spoken of previously. And then with respect to SRS and its impact, first, SRS continues to perform extremely well. There is significant pressure in the roofing market. We know that shipments are down double digits from the absence of storm activity this year. SRS actually comped flat for Q3. And so we think that they are taking significant share. But as our expectations have weakened slightly for them in the full year, rather than seeing them grow at mid-single digits, they're likely to grow low single digits. You do see some deleverage in SRS in the supply chain and in OpEx. And so you add those together and get your revision to the fiscal year guide. And really, you just add to that, if you're talking about Q4, you have all the same dynamics, but let's not forget, you're comparing Q4 last year has 14 weeks of expense. Q4 this year has 13 weeks of expense. And so you've got 50-ish basis points of operating expense deleverage in the quarter. So hopefully, that will help you with the walk.

Yes, that helped a lot. And then a follow-up. You mentioned on this call and in the release that there was an expectation of increased or improving demand, I guess, through the remainder of the year at one point. Was that an expectation based on housing or an expectation that there would be storms? And if there was any volatility related to government shutdown, do you have enough time looking backwards since the reopening that there's been an improvement in how the consumer is behaving?

Yes, Simeon, let me step back and just paint a broader picture of what we're seeing with the consumer in our sector. Our comps definitely slowed as the quarter progressed, but great work by the team to register the positive comp for the entire quarter. And as we said, the primary driver of that sales pressure was the lack of storm activity in the quarter. We don't plan for storms per se, but there's always some weather impact in the baseline. And given last year pretty significant storm activity, in this year truly 0. There was no storm activity this year. So we saw that most acutely in October. That was the single heaviest impacted month, and that's where, as Richard called out, the comp progression turned negative in October. And then you talked about the overall economy in housing. We did expect to start seeing some pickup in demand in the second half of the year. And this wasn't just the calendar dynamic of, oh, things will be better in the second half. We're expecting interest rates and mortgage rates to come down, which they did that would have been some assistance to housing. But we really just saw ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing that are disproportionately impacting home improvement demand. I think the good news is the team, as I said, is executing at a very high level, and we believe we're taking share. And if you adjust for the storm activity, our Q3 comp, the underlying business comp was essentially the exact same as Q2. And adjusting, again, for storm and weather, call that underlying business to be about a 1% comp in each of Q2 and Q3. So now here we are going into Q4, and we're going to see even more quarter-over-quarter pressure from the storm activity. So again, there's nothing that's happened this year. The storm activity and the rebuild and repair continued into Q4 last year. So we'll have even more storm pressure year-over-year in Q4. And then we just don't see the catalyst to increase that underlying storm-adjusted demand in the market. So I mean it's certainly a very interesting consumer dynamic out there. On the one hand, you look at certain economic indicators and you say, geez, things are pretty good. You look at GDP, you look at PCE, those are both strong. But on the other hand, what's impacting us in home improvement is the ongoing pressure in housing and incremental consumer uncertainty. So take housing. I mean, housing has been soft for some time. We all know the higher interest rates and affordability concerns. But what we're seeing now is even less turnover. The housing activity is truly at 40-year lows as a percentage of housing stock. I think we're at 2.9% turnover. And then home prices have started to adjust in even more markets over this past quarter. And then when you look at the consumer, what's going to spark the consumer, we still believe we have one of the healthiest consumer segments in the whole economy. But again, the economic uncertainty continues largely now due to living costs, affordability is a word that's being used a lot, layoffs, increased job concerns, et cetera. So that's why we don't see an uptick in that underlying storm-adjusted demand in the business. So as I said earlier, we're going to keep controlling what we can control, support our associates and deliver just a great value proposition for the customer and believe we took share in Q3 and year-to-date this year and do the same thing in Q4.

I wanted to start on the average ticket. I guess any callouts on commodities versus same SKU inflation? And then with last quarter ticking down on promotion, curious how Q3 played out and whether you'd expect the industry to be more or less promotional this Q4.

Yes, it’s Billy. Thank you for the question. Regarding the average ticket, as we’ve mentioned in previous calls, we continue to observe customers opting for more innovative products. In fact, we have not identified any instances of customers trading down that we haven’t already discussed. There has been a modest increase in ticket size, primarily driven by innovation and trends in the marketplace. The level of promotional activity remains consistent year-over-year in both the third and fourth quarters. As Ted noted, the fundamental demand in our business remained stable and consistent with what we experienced in the second quarter, aside from the impact of the storms. Overall, I feel optimistic about the fundamentals and see continued customer engagement. While projects may face financial pressures, the promotional landscape is similar to last year’s for the remainder of this year, including in the fourth quarter.

Got it. And then, Richard, a couple of follow-ups on GMS. First of all, on operating expenses, could you help us understand what's onetime in terms of impact transactions, et cetera, on Q3 and Q4? And then on the inventory growth, up about 10%, any color you can offer on how much is GMS versus underlying volume versus pricing?

Sure. You can think about the GMS transaction fees as about 5 basis points of margin to the year or 5 basis points of expense any way you put it, about 15 basis points to the quarter. Obviously, Q3 is one of our larger quarters. And you can think of the impact is about $0.05 of EPS for the year, for GMS transaction fees, and those all occurred in Q3. With respect to the inventory, inventory increases reflect principally the inclusion of GMS now in our balance sheet and the fact that we've leaned into investments, in particular, investments with respect to hitting our speed promise. So we've seen fantastic results from improving our speed and reliability of delivery over the last year. That's something we've leaned into. We have our DFC network, which we think is unmatched in our market. And as we see results from it, and obviously, this quarter, you saw an 11% comp online, we're going to continue to lean into that investment. So for the most part, it's investments in the business.

Given all the comments from this morning, it begs the question, can home improvement demand recover without some assistance from either an increase in underlying housing activity or a reduction in interest rates? And how should this foster the market's expectation towards the recovery or potential recovery in 2026?

Thanks, Michael. We've talked about all the different drivers of demand in our segment. And there are leads and lags in all of them, and we've clearly called out over time that the most statistically relevant would be home price appreciation and household formation and housing turnover. Those three right now are pressured for sure. But we also know that we've more than worked our way through the pull forward of the COVID years. And there are many industry reports and calculations of now underspend per household. So on one hand, we're looking at something as much as a $50 billion cumulative underspend in normal repair and remodel activity in U.S. housing. On the other hand, we have less turnover and home price appreciation. So that tension is going to have to balance itself out as we work through the rest of this year and into next year. But fundamentally, our job is to put great value propositions in front of the customer and take share in any environment. So can The Home Depot grow? The answer is yes. Will the industry have some shorter-term pressures with turnover in home price? Yes as well. Yes, you're correct, Mike. We've made significant advancements in the Pro segment. We've previously discussed the overall home improvement market, which exceeds $1 trillion and is evenly divided between Pro and consumer sectors. We've historically performed well in both areas, but we've identified a strong opportunity to enhance our value proposition for the Pro segment by developing wholesale capabilities to capture a larger share of that customer base. This is what we've been working on, and we will provide more details about it in a few weeks in New York. We're very pleased with the initiatives and organic investments we've made to enhance those capabilities, supplemented by two acquisitions of robust wholesale platforms, SRS and GMS. Regarding your question on fixed cost structure, it's noteworthy that our organic efforts are quite asset-light. No matter whether we lease our distribution centers or not, the capital we invest in those centers primarily supports general store replenishment, with the added advantage of enabling us to serve customers from those facilities. As Richard mentioned, the speed aspect acts as a flywheel, and our investments in our direct fulfillment centers are designed to benefit all customers and boost speed, which we have successfully achieved. Additionally, our related operating costs include variable incentive pay for our outside sales team. We lease trucks and adjust the number of trucks deployed in markets based on seasonal volume fluctuations. Overall, aside from a modest IT investment, we haven't introduced significant fixed costs into the business to support our organic Pro initiatives.

I wanted to follow up on the implied fourth quarter operating margin question. It seems you're indicating about 10.3%. Did you mention that 50 basis points of that was due to the 53rd week lap? Is there anything unique we should consider regarding whether this is the appropriate level to start thinking about building the business as we look to the future? For instance, should we take into account the 53rd week lap or the potential structural changes in the seasonality of the SRS and GMS business affecting the typical operating margin flow throughout the year?

Yes. Thanks, Chris. I would use our full year guide as the appropriate jumping off point. I think Q4 has a couple of items of noise. The first was the 53rd week. The second actually is the shape of the business. And if you look, you can actually see, for instance, the public filings of GMS when they were a public company and see the Q4 or rather our Q4 is a significant low point from a volume perspective. That's true for SRS as well. And so SRS and GMS see seasonal swings that are greater than Home Depot. You're going to just see that amplified if you hold Q4 in isolation. And so that's why I would really point you to full year as the right jumping off point for your modeling.

That's super helpful. I mean if you step back about the...

I wanted to follow up on the complex Pro and GMS side. So firstly, a short-term question on the $2 billion contribution to sales from GMS this year. I think if we do the math based on the reported numbers last year, kind of implies a high single-digit percentage decline on a year-over-year basis. I don't know if I completely got that math right. If that's true, how much of that is macro weakness versus underlying share dynamics? And is there any additional color you can provide on that underlying market?

So basically, you're owning it for a quarter plus 8 weeks, and you're heading into the lowest quarter of the year for GMS' fiscal year. There was also weather impact across Home Depot, SRS and GMS. No one was immune to the broader weather impacts in the market. And so $2 billion is an approximation. We know that GMS continues to take share. We continue to take share as an enterprise and particularly in all of GMS' categories, and we feel great about that business going forward.

Well, there's structural differences in the margins of the wholesale business in retail. I mean, at the highest level, retail would have higher gross and lower operating cost in the inverse with wholesale. Of course, as we drive synergies between the 2 platforms and the most important synergy is the cross-sell and the value proposition to the Pro, we'll be able to leverage incremental sales in both retail and wholesale platforms to leverage the businesses. And of course, just operating efficiencies across a larger scale business will be able to drive efficiencies as well. But the fundamental difference of wholesale margin structure and a retail margin structure would be the case going forward. Those wouldn't dramatically change.

Richard, I would like to hear your high-level thoughts on cross-selling now that GMS is integrated. How do you rank the current cross-selling opportunities? What are you focusing on from a cross-selling perspective as we move into next year? It would be great to understand the order of these opportunities.

Yes, Amit, it's Mike here. Thanks for the question. We see just from the relationships that have already been established between the outside sales force that we've got here within Home Depot, combined with the sales forces that they have originally with SRS and now with GMS, there are account handoffs that happen. So a great example, recently, with GMS engaged in a large roofing sale on a property, the customer was looking for much more in terms of product, in terms of whether it be framing, flooring and more. And that relationship then that SRS introduced to The Home Depot outside sales force to come in and sell that engagement to the contractor worked quite successfully. And that's just one example of many that have happened, and they happen both ways, whereby The Home Depot sales organization recognizes a large roofing opportunity that they can pass over to SRS or a large drywall opportunity that they can pass over to GMS, and those engagements are happening on a daily and weekly basis.

Yes. We'll certainly go into a lot more detail in a few weeks. But the model that SRS deploy is very similar to GMS that they'll drive organic comp growth through existing branches. They open greenfield branches. And then they'll focus on tuck-in customer list expansion-oriented acquisitions. And they've been doing that quite successfully. On the branches, think of SRS GMS, 40 to 50 branches a year, and they've been sort of running at that pace since we acquired SRS. And then they've done a handful of little tuck-in acquisitions. And again, these can be a 1 branch, $5-ish million acquisition or a smaller regional $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, a couple of few branch operations. So it's going really, really well, and we see that continuing with a key part of the business model.

It's not just about our plans; it's actually happening right now. If you look at our non-comp sales, combining new stores and new SRS branches, you're seeing about 0.5 points of sales growth driven by those two investments. We're thrilled with that.

I wanted to follow up on the storm impact. So it sounds like it was 80 basis points of the third quarter pressure to same-store sales. How large will that be in the fourth quarter? And then we should be mindful of that, that that's also a headwind to think about in the first half of next year?

Well, thanks. As Ted said, the underlying demand for the business was sort of similar Q2 to Q3. If you talk about storm Q3 to Q4, we absolutely are lapping strong results, in fact, even slightly higher sales last year in Q4 than Q3. Let's call it relatively even. So let's say, you basically, if you've got underlying minus the storm impact, you've got pretty much similar run rates for Q3 and Q4.

I mean I wouldn't say that. We'll talk more about this in a few weeks. But the first thing to remember is SRS is much more in the reroof than new construction. So they're 80-plus percent reroof. So yes, their 15%, 20% of the business that goes into new construction is impacted. But the fundamental business is reroof activity, again, which is why it's disproportionately impacted with storms, particularly in their home and biggest market, which is Texas, which is by far, we think of hurricanes, we think of hail and other wind events. There was none such in 2025. So no, we look at SRS as a long-term mid-single-digit grower. And this is principally a storm impacted dynamic that's taken them down to flattish right now. But as Richard said earlier, we think roofing shipments, you can see this by reported data, roofing square shipments into the market are down mid-teens and SRS was flat. So clearly taking share.