US housing renovation store Home Depot lowered its full-year forecast on Tuesday, following a year-on-year decline in sales despite a third quarter that beat analysts’ expectations.
The company expects its sales to continue to decline annually between three and four percent, whereas it previously forecast a two percent decline.
“Our quarterly performance was in line with our expectations,” CEO Ted Decker said in a statement.
Customers aren’t cutting out home repairs totally, but they are scaling back, he said.
“Similar to the second quarter, we saw continued customer engagement with smaller projects, and experienced pressure in certain big-ticket, discretionary categories.”
Between August and October, sales totaled $37.71 billion, down three percent year-on-year.
Net income fell 12.2 percent compared to a year ago, at $3.81 billion.
Those results were better than analysts’ consensus ahead of Tuesday’s earnings report.
Transactions also fell, though the average check-out price remained stable, at $89.36, roughly the same as a year ago.
At the end of October, the company had some 2,300 stores in North America and employed just under 500,000 people.
Shares rose in trading ahead of the market open on Tuesday, up 1.93 percent. (AFP)
