Home Depot beats on EPS, misses on revenue, and cut its forecast

When companies report earnings, expectations mean everything. In the case of home improvement retailer Home Depot (NYSE: HD), expectations must not have been too high. The company beat on its EPS estimates with actual earnings of $3.17 versus estimates of $3.08. While that is good news, the company missed on its revenue estimate and it issued a lower revenue forecast for 2019 as a whole. Normally, beating EPS estimates by a small margin, missing on revenue estimates and issuing a more cautious outlook would send a stock down. But that wasn’t the case for Home Depot on Tuesday. The stock gained 4.65% on the day while the overall market was lower.

From a fundamental perspective, Home Depot has been pretty solid over the last few years. The company has been able to grow earnings at a rate of 22% per year over the last three years. The profit margin is also solid at 13.7%. The operating margin is at 14.59% and return on assets is at 20.36%. The return on equity wasn’t available at the time of this writing due to the recent earnings report.

One of the things that helped Home Depot move higher was a share buyback program that reduced the number of shares outstanding dramatically.

The Tickeron SMR rating for this company is 2, indicating very strong sales and a profitable business model. SMR (Sales, Margin, Return on Equity) rating is based on comparative analysis of weighted Sales, Income Margin and Return on Equity values compared against S&P 500 index constituents.

The Tickeron Valuation Rating of 5 indicates that the company is seriously undervalued in the industry. A rating of 1 points to the most undervalued stocks, while a rating of 100 points to the most overvalued stocks. This rating compares market capitalization estimated by our proprietary formula with the current market capitalization. The stock’s price-to-book ratio is below average for the industry and its P/E ratio is also below average.

The Tickeron Profit vs. Risk rating for this company is 17, indicating a low risk on high returns. The average Profit vs. Risk rating for the industry is 62, placing this stock better than average.

The chart for Home Depot shows the stock trending higher within a trend channel over the last eight months. The upper rail connects the highs from November and April. The lower rail connects the lows from December, May, and now August.

The daily stochastic readings were in oversold territory just ahead of the earnings report and turned sharply higher after the report.

The weekly chart shows that the stock is approaching an all-time high while the overbought/oversold indicators are not yet in overbought territory, but are closing in on those levels.

Sentiment toward Home Depot is a little more bearish than the average stock. There are 32 analysts following the stock with 20 “buy” ratings, 11 “hold” ratings, and one “sell” rating. This puts the overall buy percentage at 62.5% and that is slightly below the average range of 65% to 75%.

The short interest ratio is currently at 3.54 and is also slightly above average. The total number of shares sold short had been creeping up ahead of the earnings report and that is an indication of increasing pessimism.

The overall picture for Home Depot is rather positive with the solid fundamentals, the solid upward trend in the price, and the slightly more pessimistic sentiment toward the stock. Of course the lowered forecast is a bit of a concern and the company cited the tariffs on Chinese goods as part of the issue. The company also cited falling lumber prices for the lowered sales forecast.