Home Depot's third-quarter was mixed with fewer violent storms reaching shore, more anxiety among U.S. consumers and a housing market that is in a deep funk.
The company lowered its fiscal 2025 adjusted earnings forecast but raised its expectations for sales growth.
For the three months ended Nov. 2, Home Depot earned $3.6 billion, or $3.62 per share. A year earlier it earned $3.65 billion, or $3.67 per share.
Removing one-time charges and benefits, earnings were $3.74 per share, a dime short of Wall Street expectations, according to a poll by FactSet.
It is the third consecutive quarter that Home Depot, an overperformer in recent years, has missed profit expectations.
Home Depot's stock declined more than 3% before the opening bell Tuesday. Shares of rival Lowe's, which will report its quarterly results on Wednesday, fell more than 2%.
“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,” CEO Ted Decker said in a statement. “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.”
Revenue for the Atlanta company rose to $41.35 billion from $40.22 billion, topping Wall Street projections of $41.15 billion.
Sales at stores open at least a year, a key gauge of a retailer’s health, increased 0.2%. In the U.S., comparable store sales edged up 0.1%.
Customer transactions fell 1.4% in the quarter. The amount shoppers spent rose to $90.39 per average receipt from $88.65 in the year-ago period.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said that Home Depot's quarter was negatively impacted by external factors, not missteps made by the company. Americans who have grown more anxious over the economy were were definitely a contributor, he said.
“The summer months were particularly challenging in this regard as consumers were actively making choices over how to spend their money, and home improvement took something of a back seat to experiences, travel, and personal indulgences,” he said.
Home Depot now anticipates fiscal 2025 adjusted earnings will decline approximately 5% from fiscal 2024’s $15.24 per share. It previously expected adjusted earnings would fall about 2% from its results in the prior fiscal year.
The chain now foresees fiscal 2025 sales growth of about 3%. Its prior forecast was for sales growth of approximately 2.8%. The company predicts comparable sales growth will be slightly positive. Previously, it predicted comparable sales growth of about 1%.
In August Home Depot said that shoppers should expect modest price increases in some categories as a result of rising tariff costs, though they wouldn’t be broad-based. Company executives told analysts during its earnings call then that more than 50% of its products are sourced domestically and wouldn’t be subject to any tariffs.
Home Depot’s results come as the U.S. housing slump drags on, with the country’s home turnover rate at the lowest level in decades. About 28 out of every 1,000 homes changed hands between January and September, the lowest U.S. home turnover rate going back to at least the 1990s, according to an analysis by Redfin.
The home turnover rate represents the number of homes sold, divided by the total number of existing sellable properties. While sales data show whether more or fewer homes are selling in a given period, the home turnover rate helps illustrate how homeowners are staying put longer.
The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows that fueled a homebuying frenzy at the start of this decade.
FILE - The Home Depot improvement store is seen in Philadelphia, Feb. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Benin has joined a growing list of African countries where military officers have seized power since 2020. The military takeover lasted several hours on Sunday before officials announced it was foiled.
In a familiar scene across West Africa, a group of soldiers appeared on Benin ’s state TV on Sunday announcing the removal of President Patrice Talon and the dissolution of the government following the swift takeover of power.
Hours later, Benin's Interior Minister Alassane Seidou said in a video shared online that the coup was foiled. The soldiers in question “launched a mutiny with the aim of destabilizing the state and its institutions,” Seidou said, adding that the military remained ”committed to the republic.”
Here is a timeline of coups in Africa, following a pattern of disputed elections, constitutional upheaval, security crises and youth discontent:
Since August 2020, Mali has witnessed two back-to-back coups. A group of soldiers mutinied and arrested senior military officers just outside the capital, Bamako, after weeks of protests by civilians demanding the then-president, Ibrahim Keïta, resign over accusations of corruption and failing to clamp down on armed groups.
Col. Assimi Goita, the military leader, entered into a power-sharing deal with Bah Ndaw, a civilian president, with Goita serving as the vice president of a so-called transitional government. In 2021, Goita overthrew Ndaw following a series of disagreements and installed himself as president. He postponed an election slated for 2022 to 2077.
Mali is one of a tripartite group of landlocked West African countries, along with Burkina Faso and Niger, run by military juntas that have now formed their own bloc after breaking from the Economic Community of West African states, and have firmly stated their objections to a return to democracy.
Following his father's death in 2021, Mahamat Idris Deby, an army general, quickly seized power, extending his family's three-decade rule of the central African nation.
Three years later, he delivered an election that he promised when he assumed power. Deby was declared the winner of the election, which the opposition claimed was rigged. He has since clamped down on critics. Former Prime Minister Succes Masra, an opposition figure, was sentenced to 20 years in prison earlier this year.
After 11 years in office, Alpha Conde was removed by a group of soldiers led by Mamady Doumbouya. In 2020, Conde had changed the constitution to allow himself to stand for a third term.
Doumbouya is running in the December polls and looking to shed his military fatigues, after a referendum this year allowed junta members to stand in elections and extended the presidential term limit from five to seven years.
The Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, staged a coup in October 2021, deposing Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for 26 years.
Burhan went on to share power with Muhammad Dangalo, known as Hedmeti, the leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
In April 2023, a simmering feud between them led to one of the world's most catastrophic conflicts, according to the United Nations. The war is still going on.
Like its neighbor Mali, Burkina Faso also witnessed two successive coups. In January 2022, Roch Kaboré was ousted by Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba. In September, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, the head of an artillery unit of Burkina Faso army, ousted Damiba on the same pretext as the earlier coup — deteriorating security.
Traoré has since ruled the country. In July, he dissolved the independent electoral commission.
Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani ousted Mohamed Bazoum, ending a rare democratic transition in Niger. The dramatic coup sparked a crisis in the regional ECOWAS bloc, which threatened to invade Niger if Bazoum was not installed and the country returned to democracy.
The crisis split the region, with Niger teaming with Burkina Faso and Mali to form a breakaway Alliance of Sahel States.
Shortly after President Ali Bongo, who had been in power for 14 years and had run for a third term, was declared the winner of an election in 2023, a group of soldiers appeared on television saying they were seizing power. They canceled the election and dissolved all state institutions.
Brice Oligui Nguema, a cousin of Bongo, took power and has since ruled Gabon. He was announced the winner of a presidential election in April.
Expressing their frustration over chronic water shortages and power outages, young people in Madagascar took to the streets to demand former President Andry Rajoelina’s resignation.
Rajoelina instead dissolved his government and refused to resign, leading to a military takeover of the southern African country.
On Nov. 26, Soldiers in Guinea-Bissau followed up a disputed presidential election three days earlier by seizing power. Critics including the opposition called the coup a staged takeover to avoid having the incumbent lose the election.
Incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embaló and the main opposition candidate, Fernando Dias, both claimed to have won the Nov. 23 presidential election.
Embaló was released and allowed to flee to neighboring Senegal, from where he has since departed. The new military junta made appointments, several of them allies of the deposed president.
Less than two weeks after the coup in Guinea-Bissau, soldiers staged a similar takeover in Benin that followed gunshots heard near the presidential palace.
A group of soldiers, which called itself the Military Committee for Refoundation, appeared on state TV announcing that the West African nation's leader, Talon, has been removed and state institutions dissolved.
The soldiers appointed Lt. Col. Pascal Tigri as president of the military committee.
Hours later, officials said the coup was foiled by the armed forces and that the military remained ”committed to the republic.”
FILE - Benin's President Patrice Talon attends a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, on May 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)
