Home Depot continued to deal with a pullback in spending from customers in its fiscal third quarter, but it was less severe than in the past, and its performance beat Wall Street's expectations. The home improvement retailer also boosted its full-year revenue outlook.
Revenue for the Atlanta-based company improved 6.6% to $40.22 billion in the quarter. That topped the $39.31 billion that analysts surveyed by FactSet predicted.
Sales at stores open at least a year, a key gauge of a retailer's health, slipped 1.3%. In the U.S., the figure fell 1.2%. Still, that's a marked improvement from the second quarter, when sales at stores open at least a year declined 3.3% and dropped 3.6% in the U.S.
Third-quarter customer transactions were nearly flat when compared with the prior-year period, while the amount shoppers spent declined slightly to $88.65 per average ticket from $89.36 a year earlier.
Home improvement retailers like Home Depot have been dealing with homeowners putting off bigger projects due to higher rates and lingering concerns about inflation.
While mortgage rates have started to ease recently, the U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.
Last month the National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales fell 1% in September, from August, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million. That marked the second straight monthly decline and the slowest annual sales pace since October 2010 when the housing market was still in a deep slump following the late-2000s real estate crash.
Home Depot Inc. earned $3.65 billion, or $3.67 per share, for the period ending Oct. 27. A year earlier, it earned $3.81 billion, or $3.81 per diluted share.
Stripping out certain items, earnings were $3.78 per share. Wall Street was calling for $3.65 per share.
“While macroeconomic uncertainty remains, our third-quarter performance exceeded our expectations,” Ted Decker, chair, president and CEO, said in a statement on Tuesday. “As weather normalized, we saw better engagement across seasonal goods and certain outdoor projects as well as incremental sales related to hurricane demand."
Home Depot now anticipates full-year revenue to rise about 4%. Its prior outlook was for revenue to be up 2.5% to 3.5%. The chain now foresees sales at stores open at least a year to be down about 2.5%. It previously forecast full-year sales at stores open at least a year would drop between 3% and 4%
In addition, Home Depot predicts earnings per share will fall about 2% and adjusted earnings per share will decline approximately 1%. Its prior guidance was for earnings per share to fall between 2% and 4%.
In premarket trading, Home Depot shares rose 2.1%.
FILE - Customers arrive at The Home Depot store in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on July 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, who served two Republican presidents as one of the country’s best known conservative lawyers and successfully argued on behalf of same-sex marriage, died Wednesday. He was 84.
The law firm Gibson Dunn, where Olson practiced since 1965, announced his death on its website. No cause of death was given.
Olson was at the center of some of the biggest cases of recent decades, including a win on behalf of George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida presidential election recount dispute that went before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Even in a town full of lawyers, Ted’s career as a litigator was particularly prolific," said Mitch McConnell, the longtime Senate Republican leader. “More importantly, I count myself among so many in Washington who knew Ted as a good and decent man."
Bush made Olson his solicitor general, a post the lawyer held from 2001 to 2004. Olson had previously served in the Justice Department as an assistant attorney general during President Ronald Reagan's first term in the early 1980s.
During his career, Olson argued 65 cases before the high court, according to Gibson Dunn. Those included the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 2010 case that eliminated many limits on political giving, and a successful challenge to the Trump administration's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
One of Olson's most prominent cases put him at odds with many fellow conservatives. After California adopted a ban on same-sex marriage in 2008, Olson joined forces with former adversary David Boies, who had represented Democrat Al Gore in the presidential election case, to represent California couples seeking the right to marry.
During closing arguments, Olson contended that tradition or fears of harm to heterosexual unions were legally insufficient grounds to discriminate against same-sex couples.
“It is the right of individuals, not an indulgence to be dispensed by the state,” Olson said. “The right to marry, to choose to marry, has never been tied to procreation.”
A federal judge in California ruled in 2010 that the state's ban violated the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court let that decision stand in 2013.
“This is the most important thing I’ve ever done, as an attorney or a person,” Olson later said in a documentary film about the marriage case.
He told The Associated Press in 2014 that the marriage case was important because it "involves tens of thousands of people in California, but really millions of people throughout the United States and beyond that to the world.”
His decision to join the case added a prominent conservative voice to the rapidly shifting views on same-sex marriage across the country.
Boies remembered Olson as a giant in legal circles who “left the law, our country, and each of us better than he found us. Few people are a hero to those that know them well. Ted was a hero to those who knew him best."
Olson's personal life also intersected tragically with the nation's history when his third wife, well-known conservative legal analyst Barbara Olson, died on Sept. 11, 2001. She was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
In recent years, his other high profile clients have included quarterback Tom Brady during the “Deflategate” scandal of 2016 and technology company Apple in a legal battle with the FBI over unlocking the phone of a shooter who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.
The range of his career and his statute on the national stage were unmatched, said Barbara Becker, managing partner of Gibson Dunn.
“Ted was a titan of the legal profession and one of the most extraordinary and eloquent advocates of our time,” Becker said in a statement.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
FILE - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, left, talks with former Solicitor General Ted Olson, before President Bush delivers a speech on terrorism in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sept. 6, 2006. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Former Solicitor General Ted Olson testifies on a panel of experts and character witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on the final day of the confirmation hearings, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - Chad Griffin, right, president of the Human Rights Campaign, leaves the Supreme Court, with Jeff Zarrillo, left, and Paul Katami, second from left, the plaintiffs in the California Proposition 8 case, and their attorney Ted Olson, center, in Washington, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - Former United States Solicitor General Ted Olson, center, speaks with former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, right, before an installation ceremony for FBI Director Chris Wray at the FBI Building, Sept. 28, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
