Home Depot (HD) earnings for the first quarter of 2022

Home Depot on Tuesday raised its outlook for the full year after reporting strong quarterly profits, fueled by the company’s strongest sales for the first quarter in history. The company’s shares rose 4% in pre-marketing trading.

Here’s what Home Depot said compared to what Wall Street expected, based on a survey by analysts at Refinitiv:

• Earnings per share: $ 4.09 versus $ 3.68 expected
• Revenue: $ 38.91 billion versus the expected $ 36.72 billion

The home improvement retailer reported first-quarter net income of $ 4.23 billion, or $ 4.09 per share, compared to $ 4.15 billion, or $ 3.86 per share, a year earlier. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected the company to earn $ 3.68 per share.

Net sales rose 3.8% to $ 38.91 billion, beating expectations of $ 36.72 billion. Sales in the same store increased by 2.2% during the quarter.

“The strong performance in the quarter is even more impressive, as we compared it to last year’s historical growth and faced a slower start to spring this year,” CEO Ted Decker said in a statement.

This marks the first quarter of Decker’s head of the company. Decker, a longtime veteran of Home Depot, previously served as chief operating officer and inherited the top job at a difficult time to improve the home.

Inflation continues to rise, which could lead consumers to postpone renovation projects. Rising interest rates could slow down the hot housing market and slow down expensive home improvement plans. And many consumers spent the first days of the pandemic painting their walls, buying new patio furniture and taking care of other home-made projects that won’t need to be repeated for at least a few years.

But Tuesday’s results show that consumers are still willing to spend money on their homes and the company does not expect the trend to reverse.

For 2022, Home Depot now expects sales growth of about 3% and earnings per share growth with average single-digit numbers. The company previously forecast “slightly positive” sales growth and earnings per share with low single digits.

Read the full report here.