Home Depot Inc. (HD) announced mixed results for the first quarter. The company’s earnings beat estimates, but revenue for the quarter fell short of consensus forecast, sending its shares down more than 2 percent in the early trading on Tuesday.
The company’s sales mainly took a hit from rarely long winter season that hurt sales of its typical spring goods such as terrace furniture and lawn-mowers.
Overall, Atlanta, Georgia-based Home Depot reported net income of $2.40 billion or $2.08 a share for the three-month period ended April 29, up 19.4 percent from the comparable quarter, a year earlier. Analysts on average were looking for earnings of $2.05 a share.
Revenue for the quarter came in at $24.95 billion, up 4.4 percent from the same period last year, but missed consensus forecast of $25.16 billion.
Sales at the company’s stores open for at least 12 months surged 4.2 percent in the quarter, missing Wall Street estimate of a 5.4 percent rise.
Home Depot said that its comparable-store sales surged 4.2 percent, while U.S. comparable-store sales advanced 2.9 percent. Analysts surveyed by Consensus Metrix were looking for a rise of 5.6 percent in same-store sales and a surge of 5.5 percent in U.S. same-store sales.
The company said that its customer traffic declined 1.3 percent during the quarter, mainly due to prolonged winter season in some parts of the United States.
Total operating costs jumped 9 percent to $5.24 billion.
Looking forward, Home Depot expects revenue to increase by nearly 6.7 percent in 2018, while comparable-sales to surge by nearly 5 percent.
The company’s CEO Craig Menear said in a statement that Home Depot had strong results in all markets and categories, excluding its seasonal business.
