- Lowe's beat first-quarter profit and sales estimates.
- Sales were down from a year ago, and the home improvement retailer said do-it-yourself customers were buying fewer big-ticket items.
- Lowe's results come after rival Home Depot Inc. missed out on profits.
Lowe's leads Wall Street in quarterly profits Earnings estimates rose on Tuesday despite a decline in purchases of big-ticket items by do-it-yourself customers.
The home improvement retailer's results were in line with Home Depot's results last week. Home Depot missed sales estimates due to a tough housing market and a late start to spring.
Lowe's maintained its full-year outlook. The company expects total sales to be between $84 billion and $85 billion, down from $86.38 billion in fiscal 2023. The company expects same-store sales to decline 2% to 3% year-over-year and expects earnings per share to be approximately $12 to $12.30.
Below is a comparison of the company's first-quarter financial report and Wall Street expectations, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG.
- Earnings per share: $3.06 vs. $2.94 expected
- Revenue: $21.36 billion vs. $21.12 billion expected
Lowe's net income for the three months ended May 3 fell to $1.76 billion, or $3.06 a share, from $2.26 billion, or $3.77 a share, a year earlier.
Revenue decreased from $22.35 billion in the same period last year. This is the fifth consecutive quarter that Lowe's sales have declined compared to the same period last year.
Compared with Home Depot, Lowe's gets less business from painters, contractors and other home professionals, which tends to provide it with more stable business even as do-it-yourself customers retreat: About half of Home Depot's sales come from professionals, compared with about 20% to 25% for Lowe's.
Still, Lowe's is trying to win business from more professionals. In a company news release, CEO Marvin Ellison said growth in professional profits and online sales helped partially offset declines in do-it-yourself spending.
Lowe's is in the same situation as the same period last year, when the company lowered its full-year forecast and sales decreased compared to the same period last year. At the time, Ellison warned investors that the company expected “a decline in consumer discretionary spending in the near term.”
Since then, in each of the three quarters, Lowe's sales have also declined year-over-year.
Lowe's stock closed Monday at $229.17, giving the company a market value of $131.13 billion. As of Monday's close, the company's stock had risen nearly 3% since the beginning of the year, lagging the S&P 500's 11% rise.
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