Summary List Placement
Home Depot beat quarterly same-store sales estimates on Tuesday, riding a sustained wave of demand for home improvement goods as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on.
However, the company’s shares fell 1.5% in low-volume premarket trading, after Home Depot warned that it was unable to predict how consumer spending would evolve this year.
“If the demand environment during the back half of fiscal 2020 were to persist through fiscal 2021, it would imply flat to slightly positive comparable sales growth,” Richard McPhail, the company’s chief financial officer, said.
Same-store sales jumped 24.5% in the fourth quarter ended January 31, beating analysts’ average estimate of an 18.9% increase, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Total sales in the quarter reached $32.3 billion, an increase of $6.5 billion year-over-year.
Net earnings rose 16% to $2.9 billion.
Total sales for the 2020 fiscal year, meanwhile, rose 19.9% to $132.1 billion, for annual net earnings of $12.9 billion.
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