Q1 2023 The Home Depot Inc Earnings Call
Speaker 1: Reconciliation of these measures is provided on our website. Now let me turn the call over to Ted.
Speaker 2: Thank you Isabel and good morning everyone. Over the past three years we grew our business $47 billion or 43%.
Speaker 2: After this period of unprecedented growth, we expected demand would moderate in fiscal 2023, which our first quarter results reflect. Sales for the first quarter were $37.3 billion, down 4.2% for the same period last year.
Speaker 2: Comp sales declined 4.5% from the same period last year. In our US stores, a negative comp of 4.6%.
Speaker 2: Deluted earnings per share, or $3.82 in the first quarter, compared to $4.09 in the first quarter last year.
Speaker 2: Our sales for the quarter were blower expectations, primarily driven by lumber deflation in unfavorable weather. Particularly in our Western division, has extreme weather events in California disproportionately impacted our results.
Speaker 2: As you will hear from Billy, where whether it was favorable, we saw strength in key spring-related categories, such as live goods and other garden-related categories.
Speaker 2: As we look beyond weather and lumber deflation, our underlying performance in the quarter was mixed. We saw more pressure across the business compared to what we observed when we reported fourth quarter results a few months ago.
Speaker 2: While there was relative strength in project related categories like building materials, plumbing, and hardware, we had many departments with negative comps in the quarter and continue to see pressure in a number of big ticket discretionary categories.
Speaker 2: DIY customers outperformed the pro in the quarter, but both were negative.
Speaker 2: While internal and external surveys suggest that pro-backlogs are still healthy and elevated relative to historical norms, they are lower than they were a year ago. Additionally, recent external data points suggest that the types of projects in these backlogs are changing from large-scale remodels to smaller projects.
Speaker 2: Though we are only one quarter into the year, we believe the underperformance, this quarter relative to our expectations, lumber deflation, and continued uncertainty around underlying demand, were in some more cautious sales outlook for the remainder of the year.
Speaker 2: Richard will take you through the details in a moment, but we are now guiding to a comp sales decline between two and five percent. Reflecting this updated comp guidance, we now expect our operating margin rate to be between 14.3 and 14 percent. In earnings per share to decline between seven and 13%.
Speaker 2: We continue to navigate a unique environment. We will remain agile and respond to evolving customer dynamics.
Speaker 2: while always being an advocate for value. In addition, we feel confident in the investments we have made in Wage are driving the intended results.
Speaker 2: As Anne will discuss, in the short timeframe since our most recent wage enhancements took effect, we are attracting a greater number of qualified applicants and attrition is down.
Speaker 2: Lastly, and as you would expect, we will continue to focus on driving productivity and efficiency across the business.
Speaker 2: While the near-term environment is uncertain, we remain bullish on the medium-to-long-term outlook for home improvement and our ability to grow share in this large and fragmented market.
Speaker 2: We look forward to sharing our perspective on the many opportunities ahead when we meet at our Investor and Analyst Conference coming up on June 13th.
Speaker 2: Our team continues to focus on what is most important are associates and customers.
Speaker 2: our merchants, store and met teams, supplier partners, and supply chain teams.
Speaker 2: did an outstanding job delivering value and service to our customers throughout the quarter. I'd like to close by thanking them for their dedication and hard work.
I'd also like to introduce Billy Bastick, who is recently named EVP of merchandising. Billy is a 33 year veteran of the Home Depot and brings tremendous experience to the role having spent his entire career with us in various roles of increasing responsibility throughout the merchandising organization.
Not only is Billy a world-class merchant and leader, he's also a fantastic steward of our culture, and it's my pleasure to welcome him to the call today.
Thank you Ted, and good morning everyone. I want to start by also thanking all of our associates and suppliers partners for their ongoing commitment to serving our customers and communities.
If you heard from Ted during the first quarter, our sails were below our expectations, primarily driven by lumber deflation and unfavorable weather.
We also saw a continuation of the trend we observed in the fourth quarter, with consumers pulling back on big ticket and some discretionary type purchases.
However, where weather was favorable, we saw strength in smaller-ticket outdoor projects.
Turning to our department comp performance for the first quarter.
Four of our 14 merchandising departments posted positive comments which were building materials, hardware, plumbing and mill work.
During the first quarter, our comp average ticket increased 0.2% and comp transactions decreased 5%.
Excluding core commodities comp average ticket was primarily impacted by inflation across several product categories as well as the demand for new and innovative products.
Deflation from core commodity categories negatively impacted our average ticket growth by approximately 335 basis points during the first quarter. Driven primarily by deflation and lumber.
During the first quarter, we saw a significant decline in lumber prices relative to a year ago.
As an example, on average framing lumber was approximately $420 per 1000 board feet compared to approximately $1170 in the first quarter of 2022, which is a decrease of 64%.
Turning to total company online sales, sales leveraging our digital platform decreased approximately 2.9% compared to the first quarter of last year.
For those customers that chose to transact with us online during the first quarter, over 45% of our online orders were fulfilled through our stores.
DIY customers outperform the Pro in the quarter, but both were negative.
ProResults experience a disproportionate impact as a result of lumber deflation and a wet start to spring negatively impacted both customer cohorts.
Big ticket comp transactions, or those over $1,000, were down 6.5% compared to the first quarter of last year.
We saw some big ticket strength across pro-heavy categories like portable power, gypsum, and pipe and fittings.
After a couple of years of unprecedented demand in the home improvement market, we continue to see softness in big ticket discretionary categories like patio, grills, and appliances that likely reflects deferral of these single item purchases and pull forward. In addition, we've seen demand soften across other parts of the business including flooring,
kitchen, and bath. This softer demand may reflect consumers moving away from larger to smaller projects.
And while there are factors impacting the home improvement market, our merchandising organization will continue to focus on being our customers advocate for value.
This means continuing to provide a broad assortment of best-in-class products that are in stock and available for our customers when they need it.
We will also continue to lean into products that simplify the project, saving our customers time and money. That's why I'm so excited about the innovation we're bringing to the market, whether it's Leviton's Decora Edge, Viegas copper press fittings, or the launch of Bear Dynasty exterior paint, just to name a few.
At our upcoming investor conference, I look forward to sharing more about these products and some of my favorite product innovations with you in person.
It's the power of our vendor relationships coupled with our best in class merchant organization that allows us to offer our customers the best brands and for most innovation to solve pain points, increase functionality, or enhance performance at the best value in the market.
Now, let's turn our attention to spring. While we've had a slower start to the season, we continue to be excited about the line-up of products we have for our customers and remain ready to help them with their outdoor projects or outdoor living needs.
As you've heard us say many times, we have a great lineup about door power products and our assortment of Ryobi, Milwaukee, the Walta, Makita, offer something for everyone building on an ecosystem of innovative tools powered by the same battery platforms. And our live goods look incredible.
We're ready for spring with everything from shrubs to a variety of flowers, herbs, vegetables for every type of gardener.
With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Anna. Thanks, Billy, and good morning, everyone. We believe that in order to provide the best customer experience, we must focus on cultivating the best associate experience in retail. Last quarter, I spoke about the investments we have made to make it easier for associates to succeed at the Home Depot. We also announced that we would be invested approximately $1 billion in annual...
year over year improvement in our tuition rates across all associated tenure cohorts that we've seen in some time.
As a result, we're seeing improvements in key customer service metrics, as well as benefits to operations in the form of consistent staffing and less safety incidents across all regions.
These improvements are exactly what we set out to achieve with this wage investment. Consistency and talent of our workforce is an important foundation for driving both customer service and productivity.
It also gives us the ability and confidence to accelerate other key initiatives that are yielding positive results with respect to customer service and productivity.
We've implemented changes to order fulfillment processes to drive speed and efficiency when picking and staging orders for customers.
Historically, we have allocated fulfillment hours based on overall order volume. Now we have transitioned to allocating hours more accurately based on the types of products being picked.
Just for example, it takes us less time to pick and stage a paintbrush versus a patio set. We're also group and fulfillment orders in batches so that associates can pick multiple orders at one time.
We also continue to focus on simplification. We've talked about leveraging the Sidekick application to help associates prioritize the highest value tasks more effectively.
Powered by our machine learning logic, Sitekick directs associates to key bays where on-shelf availability is low or out exist.
Since Sidekick was rolled out last year, we have seen improvement in our on-shelf availability for all SKUs, but we have seen the most improvement in our high-velocity SKUs are the products that are key drivers of our business.
This has translated to an increase of approximately 300 basis points in our self-availability customer service scores. While this app is helping us to be more efficient with our tasking activity and improving our customer experience in the process, Sidekiq is just getting started.
These initiatives are just a few examples of the many different types of projects that can drive significant impacts for customers, our associates, and our shareholders. I am so excited about all that our store teams are doing to focus on both the customer and associates experience and look forward to sharing a lot more in a few weeks.
None of this would be possible without our amazing associates, and I want to thank them all for what they do every day to take care of all customers. With that, let me turn the call over to Richard. Thank you, Anne, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter, total sales were $37.3 billion.
year. During the first quarter, our total company comps were negative 4.5 percent, with comps of negative 2.5 percent in February , negative 7.5 percent in March, and negative 3.7 percent in April .
comps in the US were negative 4.6% for the quarter, with comps of negative 2.8% in February , negative 7.5% in March, and negative 3.7% in April . Our first quarter comp sales missed our own expectations.
particularly in the months of March and April , driven primarily by two notable factors.
First, Lumber Deflation drove a negative comp impact of approximately 220 basis points.
versus the first quarter of 2022.
Second, unfavorable weather, particularly in our Western division, further impacted our results.
In the first quarter, our gross margin was 33.7%, a decrease of 8 basis points
From the first quarter last year, primarily driven by increased pressure from shrink.
We continue to successfully offset supply chain and product cost pressures while maintaining our position as the customer's advocate for value.
During the first quarter, operating expense as a percent of sales increased approximately 25 basis points.
to 18.8% compared to the first quarter of 2022.
Our operating expense performance during the first quarter reflects the planned compensation increases announced during our fourth quarter 2022 call as well as a one-time benefit from a legal settlement.
Our operating margin for the first quarter was 14.9% compared to 15.2% in the first quarter of 2022.
Interest in other expense for the first quarter increased by $72 million.
to $441 million due primarily to interest in our floating rate debt, as well as higher debt balances than a year ago. In the first quarter, our effective tax rate was 24.2%, up from 23.9% in the first quarter of fiscal 2022.
Our diluted earnings per share for the first quarter were $3.82, a decrease of 6.6% compared to the first quarter of 2022. During the first quarter, we opened two new stores, bringing our total store count to 2,324.
Retail selling square footage was approximately 241 million square feet. At the end of the quarter, merchandise inventories were $25.4 billion, essentially flat compared to the first quarter of 2022.
and inventory turns were 3.9 times down from 4.4 times last year.
Turning to capital allocation. After investing in our business and paying our dividend, it is our intent to return excess cash to shareholders in the form of share repurchases.
During the first quarter, we invested approximately $900 million back into our business.
in the form of capital expenditures. And during the quarter, we paid approximately $2.1 billion in dividends to our shareholders.
and we returned approximately $3 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases. Computed on the average of beginning and ending long term debt and equity for the trailing 12 months.
Return of the invested capital was approximately 43.6% down from 45.3% in the first quarter of fiscal 2022.
Now I will comment on our guidance for fiscal 2023. As you may recall, last quarter we provided flat sales and comp guidance for fiscal 2023.
As we mentioned last quarter, our guidance did not include potential impacts from lumber deflation, which we noted could negatively impact our performance for the quarter and the year.
As a result, lumber negatively impacted comps by approximately 220 basis points in the first quarter.
Given the negative impact of the first quarter sales from lumber and weather, further softening of demand relative to our expectations, and continued uncertainty regarding consumer demand patterns,
We are updating our guidance to reflect a range of potential outcomes. We now expect fiscal 2023 sales and comp sales to decline between 2 and 5 percent.
As a result of the change in our sales outlook, we are now targeting an operating margin between 14.3 and 14.0% for the year.
Our effective tax rate is targeted at approximately 24.5%.
We expect interest expense of approximately $1.8 billion.
And we are anticipating between a 7 and 13 percent decline in diluted earnings per share compared to fiscal 2022.
As Ted mentioned, we expected 2023 to be a year of moderation in the home improvement market.
driven by monetary policy actions to dampen overall consumer demand.
In our view, we are in a transitional period in the consumer economy.
Setting the short-term impacts of monetary policy aside, we know that the home improvement customer is healthy.
and we believe the medium to long term underlying fundamentals of home improvement make it one of the most attractive markets in retail and the economy as a whole. We believe that we are well positioned to meet the needs of our customers with a broad assortment of products, strong in stock levels and knowledgeable associates.
The investments we've made in our business have enabled agility in our operating model.
As we look forward, we will continue to prudently invest to strengthen our competitive position, leverage our scale and low cost position to outperform our market and deliver shareholder value.
Thank you for your participation in today's call. And Christine, we are now ready for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your light is in the question queue.
You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue.
For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions.
Thank you. Our first question comes on the line of Chris Horvers with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your questions.
Thanks, good morning everybody. So I have two questions on the ticket side. Average ticket was flat in the first quarter. I think last year you had same skew inflation X commodity of about high single digits all year. So how much of the ticket deceleration relative to one cue last year?
which is simply a same-sque disinflation on your your basis versus, you know, things like project size and trade down.
Hey, Chris. Good morning. You know, we are still seeing inflation in same skew items. So, putting commodity aside, we gave the example of lumber being down 64%.
We're still experiencing inflation in our ticket and our average unit retail. So the non-index, so the non-commodity prices are still laughing, cost in price from last year.
And then there's still moderate inflation live this year in 2023. So...
Inflation is still present in the average ticket. So as you look ahead, how are you thinking about how much of a headwind that becomes over the year and what did you incorporate in the guidance? And then related to that, transactions are sort of back to 19 levels.
But in the first quarter, tickets still up 37% versus the first quarter of 19. I'm guessing maybe a third of that is same skew. So just trying to put in a contact the risk around ticket in terms of disinflation and then also project size and trade down.
Right. Well, you know, it's something we clearly look at carefully. There certainly has been a lot of cumulative inflation in price.
in our average unit retail, in our ticket, but that is not something that we are expecting to broadly deflate. Now commodity prices...
Those price essentially weekly and we will price those up or down on a weekly basis But price levels in a number of our products, you know have increased and been established over the past three years embedded in that higher ticket is innovation so when you think of a lot of ticket a lot of
points. So we don't see those deflating broadly as we work through this period of moderation.
deflating broadly as we work through this period of moderation.
I guess just in terms of do you think you know if you sort of look at the trend on project size Does that become you know will that cause ticket to become negative over the years that how you're thinking about it? I? Wouldn't say over the years certainly right now. We are seeing you know two of the biggest factors on on each of ticketing transactions
is, as we said, we have specific, you know, discretionary items, you know, best examples are things like a grill, a patio set, an appliance. Those tend to be, you know, one-off discretionary.
items and we are seeing pressure in those. We've been seeing pressure in those for some time. What was newer in our observations this quarter is that while projects are still strong and probe project backlog is still elevated, the size of the projects are getting a bit smaller. And it could be that
the project's being deferred or it could be that the project is being broken up into chunks. So whether, you know, rather than do an entire room or an entire basement, you start working away at it in smaller chunks. And that clearly, you know, impacts items per basket.
in overall activity.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Zacon with Citi. Please proceed with your question. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping you could comment a bit on what you're seeing in the second quarter to date just given the fact that weather has been so volatile across the U.S.
And then just in the context of that, how should we think about second quarter, maybe versus the back half of the year, what can kind of get you to the high end versus the low end of your full year guidance range? Thanks.
Sure. Well, thank you. Thanks, Stephen. So the first two weeks of May are in line with the guidance we've provided. We don't break out quarterly guidance, but the first two weeks are consistent.
with the guides we've provided. We're gonna learn a lot over the next few weeks with respect to underlying demand as we still have some of our largest selling weeks ahead of us.
If you think about what our guide implies from a shape of the year,
First, let's perhaps talk about the building blocks of our range, so how we got to the negative two to the negative five, and then we'll talk about the shape of the year. The negative two was really built on flowing through the Q1 performance, adding the Q1 lumbar impacting the guidance.
Adding a little further lumber pressure that we'll see in Q2, we think that there could be 120 basis points of comp pressure in Q2 based on current lumber price.
And then that negative two scenario also reflects our share of PCE, which shifted at a more accelerated rate than expected in the first quarter, sort of holding at that rate for the rest of the year. So those are the underlying assumptions in the negative two points.
The negative five case simply takes that PCE share shift assumption, our share of PCE, and assumes that we revert back to 2019 levels of PCE share by the end of 2019.
of the fiscal year. So that would imply the negative 5% case. When we talk about the shape of the year, for the negative two high end of the range, we would expect that the second half would be better than the first half, really due to normal.
lumbar normalization in the second half on a year-over-year basis. The vast majority of lumbar pressure year-over-year exists in that first half. So as that normalizes in the negative two case, second half improves versus the first half. In the lower end of our range, we would expect the first half would outperform the second half.
Again, due to that assumption of continued acceleration in our share of PCE. Great. Thanks for all the detail on that. And then I wanted to follow up on the comment about this being a transitional period for the consumer. In the context of the question is how do you think about this year as a potential trough and demand for home improvement.
versus it potentially being a multi-year trend, and maybe 2024 is another step down. And I know there's a lot of moving pieces, and you'll have an analyst day in a month. But if you could comment on that at all, it'd be helpful.
Yeah, why don't I just, you know, take it up a bit on the consumer and their health and then their engagement in home improvement.
If you look at the consumer overall, you know, they're still relatively strong as evidenced by continued increases in personal consumption.
And then when you look at our customer, we have one of the best customer sets.
you know, in any market sector. Our customer, you know, is stronger than the overall consumer when you think they tend to have good jobs, increasing wages, and own their homes.
collectively those home values have increased by about $15 trillion since 2019. So as we said, we grew disproportionately these past few years, $47 billion in growth, 43% cumulative comp. As consumers shifted their spending as these...
the consumer in the future engagement in home improvement, you know, think about a few things.
We've seen an accelerated shift out of goods to service spending as the broader economy has gotten back to normal. And that's in particular in home improvement. Obviously people aren't spending all their time at home as they did in the prior few years.
And then there's an impact of pull forward or deferral of certain categories, like I spoke about earlier, appliances, patio, grills, that saw, you know,
outsize growth in the early years of the pandemic. And then a newer dynamic now that we're really seeing again this just this past quarter is a more cautious consumer given the broader macro concerns, including credit availability. And that aligns with what we're observing in our business.
in the comments I made about our pros in consumers taking on smaller, less discretionary projects. And then lastly, with the buildup of inflation that we've seen, there's certainly some price sensitivity, particularly with respect to those bigger ticket discretionary items. So in general,
Our homeowner consumer remains very healthy.
It's a matter of digesting the outsized growth in shift of consumption spend out of services in the goods and particularly into home improvement.
So we'll get through this period Richard's talked about, the PCE normalization. We don't know where that ends or how quickly it goes. There's an argument that PCE and home improvement stays elevated. All the reasons we've talked about before, the home values.
are so much higher. The age of the home is considerably older on average. People are spending more time at home. So all those dynamics could suggest normalization might be in fact a higher level of PCE spending in our sector.
But regardless of all that, we'll get through this transition period and we remain incredibly bullish on the health of this sector. It's one of the absolute best sectors in all of retail. It's a large and fragmented market and we have tremendous growth opportunities going forward.
Thanks for all the detail, best of luck for the remainder of spring.
Our next question comes from the line of Zach Fatum with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good morning. Can you help us bridge the gap from the 15.3% EBIT margins last year to the 14 to 14.3 today? And specifically, how should we think about the moving parts around gross margin versus SG&A? And then specifically for Q1, cost controls were a bit better than expected. Can you talk us through the impact of the legal settlement and anything else?
At a flat comp, particularly in an inflationary environment, our business will see a degree of due average in expenses.
At a flat comp, particularly in an inflationary environment, our business will see a degree of due leverage in expenses. And so, really, three factors.
Natural leverage in the business.
a $1 billion investment in wage.
which has proven to, as Ann said, provide real benefit from a customer experience point of view. And then productivity initiatives designed to offset some of that leverage. And so when you net all those three against each other, that led to our guide of 14.5% at a flat cost.
As we reflect on the revision to guidance.
The range of operating margin that we have guided toward reflects the natural
operating margin at these negative comp levels. In other words, there are levers that help blunt deleverage, but there is deleverage still in our model. The greatest mitigator is that we have an activity-based payroll model, and so as activity in our stores decreases, so does our lever.
sorry, our level of payroll. So you do have a natural buffer there. Again, the 14.3 to the 14.0 would be the natural operating margin at the negative two and the negative five. When we think about
the one-time legal settlement. So we did realize a large one-time benefit from a legal settlement. Our guidance assumes this benefit will be offset during the remainder of the year. And so that's just a simplified assumption. So we will...
protect that 14% operating margin. We'd agree with the operate with a degree of financial flexibility and as the year progresses we'll be evaluating the levers available to us against the backdrop of the environment. Got it. Appreciate the color. I've got a big picture question.
Could you talk about the macro and housing indicators that you believe are now most correlated to your business today? And then considering the golden handcuffs of sub 3% mortgages out there, do you think this takes longer now for housing turnover to materially recover?
Well, I'll take the second one first. We've already seen the impact of housing turnover. I think that we've probably fully seen the impact of higher mortgage rates on potential sellers. In this environment, if you have a low-
fixed rate mortgage. And let's just remind ourselves, 40% of owner occupied homes are owned outright. And of the households that hold the mortgage, close to 90% of those hold fixed rate mortgages under 5%.
So with mortgage rates where they are today, there's a reluctance to sell your home. And there is a greater incentive to stay in place and improve in place. And as Ted said, you're spending more time at home and that home's getting older. And you do not have an incentive to sell and take on a higher rate mortgage. So I think we've already seen that.
and housing turnover. With respect to macro indicators, I think as Ted said, I think what we're seeing in the business now is reflective of the broader impact of tighter monetary policy and tighter credit conditions. You know, it's interesting as we saw the quarter.
Unfold if you look at how we did during February a business was actually trending quite positively in fact February's dollar run rate adjusted for normal seasonal curves would have implied a positive comp for the year You think about March well first of all March was impacted by extreme weather
and you think about the tighter credit conditions that were a result of the external environment.
We think all of those just build to a broader caution among consumers. As Ted said, our homeowner customer.
is extremely healthy, very healthy balance sheet, healthy income. This is a broader consumer economy dynamic we think we're seeing.
Thanks, Richard. Appreciate all the color. Thanks, Zach. Our next question comes from a line of Michael Lasser with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks a lot for taking my question. As you look across your entire assortment and trying to set current unit demand versus what would be a normalized rate, how many product categories are still well above what would be suggested by declare, which you think are selectable, are some who want a more
a normalized rate, perhaps if you look at appliances, grills and patio furniture and where units are today versus 2019 and extend that math to the rest of the business, what would that suggest about a downside comp scenario even from here?
Michael, great question. I wouldn't say we've gone into that level of detail by category. Certainly, a number of those categories were elevated. The ones you called out patio grills, appliances, were elevated.
on retails with innovation, as well as units with outsized demand. I think if you think of normal replacement cycles and pull forward on some of that product, that's just going to take a little bit of time to normalize.
Other categories that we haven't talked so much about that are really booming, frankly, are categories like building materials.
where we're seeing unit volume still running quite strong. We see units in lumber picking up meaningfully as prices come down and you get attachment with building materials. And then hardware which attaches to both building materials in lumber.
We're seeing our strongest hardware unit productivity and attach rate to those project starter categories. I think, Billy, it's the highest attach rate we've ever recorded. Yeah, that's right. If you think about our building materials performance, we call that out as an outperform.
Along with lumber still seeing great unit productivity Across those businesses and seeing the attack smaller certainly smaller projects taking place and then Ted did mention some of the you know We did see some pull forward and some of those those businesses that we we talked about initially you know as well
My follow-up question is, if we consider 2023 to be the transition year and comps for the Home Depot do return to growth in 2024, would you start seeing leverage on your expenses on the first dollar of growth or will there be some catch-up? Richard, you mentioned...
legal expense you expect to give back some of that over the course of this year. Presumably there will be an incentive comp benefit as you load your guidance. So will you see some of those items come back next year such that if we have in our models a positive comp we wouldn't
necessarily expect you to leverage your expenses on the first dollar of growth next year? Well, we'll get into a bit more detail on outlook in 2024 when we get together in June for the investor conference.
You know, we're not modeling 2024 to that level of specificity as we're only a few months into 2023. But broadly, Michael, you know, our model is meant to leverage and will leverage with volume. There's so much being said about scale.
And, you know, we have some costs to take out of the business. For sure, you think on the product side with transportation in particular, you'll see significant costs come out as we work through our current inventory levels.
with the higher transportation rates experienced during COVID. And then on the operating model, the store and labor, that will always leverage with growth.
And obviously, you know, we manage costs and price independently, Michael, and transportation costs are a market dynamic.
And so, you know, we'll make sure that we're positioned as the customer's advocate for value with respect to price. But as Ted said, we'll get more into this in June 13th.
Can I just clarify what that comment is intended to say? One of the debates is costs have come down whether transportation costs certain raw materials. So there's a question of whether that means there's going to be like for like product deflation in employment.
in non-commodity related areas over the course of this year. And it sounds like Home Depot is gonna continue to be an advocate for growth, but how would you clarify that?
for advocate for value, sorry. Right, no, again, we manage cost and price independently. As Ted said, we don't expect broad-based deflation in this market. Understood, thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.
Next question comes from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question. Hi, good morning.
Good morning. My first question, I know we've discussed a bit already, but the weather. I was just wondering if you could go into a little more detail, what you saw, kind of the spread between, in comps, between markets where weather was an issue and markets where weather may have been more normal. And then as... guitar gay year wanted to play to see, Roed Hon frankly think is a very close Gard Shell entrepreneur.
I mean, looking at our data, spring has come, has arrived in a lot of markets. So what are you seeing then as far as any type of pickup in seasonal categories as these spring-like conditions are starting to take hold? Yeah, Brian , thank you. So weather, as we said, was most pronounced in the West in a very unique weather pattern. This wasn't a bad weekend. This was record rain and even things like snow in Southern California. So where weather was sustained and bad.
when we look at the West versus our Northern and Southern divisions, the impact was a multiple of what we saw in the other parts of the country. And generally, we talked in the past about the bathtub effect, and we wouldn't have updated guidance based on stronger or relatively weaker...
sales in Q1 based on weather because we would look to get that back. So when you think of a shorter spring season in the north, where people are going to get that activity done in a limited number of weeks.
don't get it done in the first quarter, people tend to make it up in the second quarter. The dynamic in the west, this went into our guidance of the minus two to minus five, is the west, it's more level weather patterns, we have very large stores, very high pro concentration.
And when you get bad weather, you're not really looking at a bathtub effect to make it up in a short season. You just sort of miss that selling week. So the difference geographically was pronounced in the West, and we just look at that as sort of lost selling weeks.
In the north, the behavior is more typical to the bathtub. We didn't have many good weekends, but when we did, sales were incredibly strong.
So we're certainly hoping for better weather in Q2. That's helpful. Very helpful. My second question, again, recognizing there's lots of moving parts here and you're dealing with varied comparisons through the year, but as you think about or as the updated guidance for Q23 you gave us today.
Does that basically assume kind of a continuation of what we've seen so far in 23 or are you assuming some type of either you know improvement further deterioration etc through the year? That's right Brian . That's why we gave the range I mean you would say that that the particular the bottom end of the range would assume greater deceleration than we've observed today, and and it's consistent with a hypothetical case we laid out at the beginning of the year.
which was to say, look, if our share of PCE reverts to 2019 levels by the end of the year, that is what you would see. And again, that would be an accelerated rate of reversion versus what we've seen. So the negative two, again, sort of has, it takes into account the fact that we saw
sharper reversion than expected in Q1 and that we would hold that share through the end of the year. It's not a perfect science and that's why we gave you a range. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Scott Gigarelli with Truist. Please proceed with your question. Good morning guys. So Richard you talked about protecting a 14% operating margin even with the wage investments that you guys have made this year at this point.
How much flexibility do you think you have on that SGA line? I know labor is your biggest plus bucket, but you're actually investing more in labor, not less. How should we think about how you guys are managing that component?
Well, the investment in wage, again, which is really proven to have driven a lot of benefit on the customer experience side, that's embedded in our guidance. We've made the investment and that will be roughly a $1 billion addition to our cost structure, but it's embedded in our guidance.
in our margin structure. Again, as the year progresses, we'll be evaluating levers available to us against the backdrop of the environment. We invest to win over the long term. We're comfortable with our level of investment as it stands today. We'll continue to assess our investments against the backdrop of the environment and we have some flexibility.
where we stand from a debt to EBITDA perspective. We had a maturity, a billion dollar maturity in April and we repaid that, didn't refinance it. We have no need necessarily to go to the debt capital markets in the short term and we'll watch market conditions as they unfold.
But we feel good about where we are from a leverage perspective.
good about where we are from a leverage perspective. Roger that, thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBank. Please proceed to your question. Hi, thanks for taking my question. We're hoping we can talk a little bit more about the trends we've been seeing in the pro business. I think this is the first time in a few quarters that it had underperformed DIY. What are you seeing out of the pro? Has it improved? Whether it's gotten better and how are you thinking about it going forward?
Yeah, I'll let Hector talk a bit about the pro and what we like that we're seeing. But from the broadest perspective, don't forget the pro was disproportionately impacted by lumber. And then, again, a very strong pro business.
out west, but we like what we're seeing with our customers as they engage with our capabilities. Yeah, good morning Brad, this is Hector. On a two year basis, our performance was positive, and as Ted just mentioned and Billy, we saw that disproportionate impact from lumber and weather. What we're most excited about is what we're seeing with our pros who are engaging with our new supply chain.
we do more detail in June about how the pro business is doing and around the capabilities that we're building.
Great. And as a quick follow-up, obviously some moving pieces here with weather and deflation. I believe your prior outlook for the home improvement market was a decline of low single digits. What are you assuming in your new outlook? I'm assuming it's a decline of low single digits.
So, we began the year with a flat outlook for PCE. There are economists who have lifted that outlook slightly for PCE. But as we observe PCE's share that our market holds and the shifts that we've seen the percentage of performance Hi- Alfred at 1950's Nike 10 inened annual
We expect our market to be down mid to high single digits. And so implicit in our guide is the expectation that we'll continue to make sure. Great, thanks so much. Our next question comes from a line of Simi and Gutman with Morgan Stanley . Please proceed with your question.
Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I want to ask about home prices. There's been a case that's made that demands decoupled a bit from turnover and that prices could matter more. I want to ask specifically about how that could inform the cadence of the year, because if you are a strict adherent to prices, the lag effect could suggest that the back half core gets a little bit worse. I'm curious how you think about that.
Well of all the housing metrics Simeon, we think home value has the tightest correlation to home improvement spend. Certainly turnover and household formation also influence the spend. And there's generally a lag effect.
as you say, to home price appreciation or depreciation. I think the difference here is how sensitive are people going to be that I was up 45% in home value from the end of 2019.
And yes, now month over month, the values are off slightly, but I'm still up 40% or 38%.
from where I was at the end of 2019. That psychology is tough to weed out with the general consumer apprehension given general inflation and macro and rising interest rates and.
You know all the talk are we going to have a recession? We're not going to have a recession So I wouldn't think that
that that would have that big of an impact. We're not thinking that's a big impact in 2H.
Okay, that's fair. One more question around the updated guide for Richard. The midpoint of this negative 2 to negative 5, just to clarify, that assumes that the core worsens from Q1 as well as the impact of lumber worsens from Q1?
You can think of the impact of lumber being an assumption that is equal across all cases.
So about 120 basis points of pressure to Q2 and then very, very slight, really non-meaningful pressure in the second half. And again, we've given a range simian to just provide sort of a balanced view here. It's tough to extrapolate this early in the year and so we feel like...
the range approach is the most helpful guide so we can give. Right, okay, thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Sigman with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Hey everybody, good morning. I wanted to follow up on that assumption that home improvement wallet share will normalize back to 2019 levels. Obviously that implies things get worse from here, but I guess there's also been some prior cycles where wallet share overshoots on the downside and goes lower than where it was before. And we talked a lot about pull forward already today, but
How do you think about that scenario and why that scenario would be wrong this time? Well, you know, as we've said, we've given the guide for our best view of 2023, and the downside of a minus five would be...
that you've reverted by the end of the year to 2019 levels. So mathematically you could say, well there'd be some hangover of that into 2024. And then your question, does it overshoot? Frankly, we don't know.
As I said earlier, there's as strong a case, if not stronger, that where you settle is a higher share, if based nothing more than your asset class.
is so much higher. I mean, we're not talking billions of dollars, we're literally talking trillions of dollars that this asset class has more value. So if you're thinking about percent of investment in any asset class, you've got a much bigger base. We talk about the average age of the home that's now over 40 years old.
if you had to call it, you would say
the spend would ultimately settle out potentially higher.
Okay, fair enough. Just want to follow up on the EBIT margin guidance for this year. I think what you laid out here at the low end, so 14% margin on negative mid-single digit comps, very consistent with the scenarios you talked about last quarter, but it does include that Q1 SGNA benefit.
Can you just help us better understand, does that imply the underlying is actually lower? I think you may have said there's an offset to that. Maybe you can just clarify that point. Thank you. Thanks for the question. To clarify, it's not assuming that the underlying would be lower. Our guide actually assumes that...
that gain would be offset through the remainder of the year. Okay, thanks very much. Christine, we have time for one more question. Thank you. Our final question will come from the line of Stephen Forbes with Guggenheim. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning. I just wanted to follow up on lumber trends. You made a comment about price deflation. Curious if you could talk about what specifically happened with unit volume during the quarter and then what the guidance assumes in the back half as the price compares ease.
in terms of unit expectations right in the second half. Yeah, thanks Stephen, this is Billy. You know, as we talked about, Richard mentioned in his previous comments, we do anticipate the greatest pressure from lumber in the first half for the total year. We think lumber deflation impact to the comp is about 100 ba-
which is in the guide, and then we don't expect a material impact from lumber for the back half of the year, but still seeing really strong unit performance in the categories I called out. And so maybe just, so you do expect unit volume to improve in the back half, or what is sort of the trajectory of unit dynamics, right, with lumber specifically implied in the guide.
Well, as the pricing normalizes year over year, you'll see the units reflect in that as we get towards a more rational state that we had in the back half of last year. And then just a quick follow-up. Any sort of preview of what we should expect at the upcoming Analyst's Day? I think you made a comment before potentially about speaking to 2024, but I wasn't sure if you could maybe clarify any sort of preview thoughts on what we should expect to hear at the Analyst's Day.
Thanks for that question, Steve. I think what you'll hear us talk about is the updated TAM that we will lay out for you, our growth opportunities to go after that TAM, and a little bit more about why we're so excited about the sector and the business.
I think what you'll hear us talk about is the updated TAM that we will lay out for you, our growth opportunities to go after that TAM, and a little bit more about why we're so excited about the sector and the business. Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you. Ms. Jansy, I would now like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments. Thanks, Christine, and thanks, everybody, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you at our investor conference on June 13th. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.