Home Depot Sales Boosted by Smaller Projects Amid Housing Sector Slump

Home Depot's sales have shown an improvement in its second quarter as customers opted for smaller projects over larger ones, despite the US housing sector still being in a slump. Revenue rose to $47.86 billion from $45.28 billion, surpassing Wall Street's prediction of $47.24 billion. Globally, comparable store sales climbed 1.7%, while in the US they increased by 1.3%.

Home Depot's Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail stated that customers continued to engage in smaller projects, leading to broad-based demand across the business. Healthy spending on these types of projects is encouraging, according to Neil Saunders from GlobalData, who noted a 1.5% increase in smaller projects undertaken during the quarter.

However, a potential weakness remains as the number of bigger-ticket projects undertaken continues to decline, falling by 2.1% over last year. Concerns around financing and a previous lack of moving activity are major drags on the bigger-ticket segment.