Weather, Housing Hammer Home Depot
05/15/07 - 04:05 PM EDT
Rob Lenihan
Updated from 11:31 a.m. EDT
Bad weather and a slumping housing market caused Home Depot(HD Quote - Cramer on HD - Stock Picks) to miss first-quarter targets, the home improvement retailer said Tuesday. "This was a difficult first quarter for us," CEO Frank Blake told analysts during a conference call. "While we expected a tougher quarter, this was worse than we expected." The Atlanta-based home-improvement retailer earned $1.05 billion, or 53 cents a share, for the quarter ended April 29, down from the year-ago $1.48 billion, or 70 cents a share. Sales inched up 0.6% from a year ago to $21.59 billion. The results were well below analysts' forecasts for a profit of 60 cents a share and sales of $21.89 billion, according to Thomson Financial. Retail same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, plummeted 7.6% from a year ago. Home Depot also said it expects full-year earnings to come in at the low end of its guidance, which already called for a 4% to 9% decline from year-ago levels. Blake, who was installed as CEO in January to replace the much-criticized Robert Nardelli, said the housing market and erratic weather across the country cut into the spring selling season. He told analysts on the call that the housing and home-improvement market continued to be soft, especially in historically strong areas such as Florida and the Northeast.
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