Top takeaways from Home Depot’s Q4 earnings bump

Yahoo Finance Video

Wed, February 25, 2026 at 4:49 AM GMT+9

In this video:

HD

+2.15%

Home Depot stock (HD) is getting a slight lift on Tuesday after reporting better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings results.

Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Brooke DiPalma breaks down Home Depot’s earnings release, while Citi Director of Retail Equity Research Steven Zaccone provides further context for the home improvement retailer’s latest bump up while taking a deeper look into its correlation to the housing market.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

Home Depot, it’s topping fourth quarter earnings expectations despite a sales decline. Our senior reporter Brooke DiPalma joins me now with the top takeaways from the results.

00:07 Speaker A

The sales not great, but not as bad as expected.

00:10 Brooke DiPalma

They were expecting that 0.4% decline. and we actually did get for the quarter about a bit of a pop of about up about .4%. What exactly uh drove these this slight increase despite Wall Street expecting that decrease was higher ticket size, but we did see a drop off in consumer transactions.

00:23 Brooke DiPalma

What the CEO Ted Deckers did say on the call was that fourth quarter results were largely in line with their expectations. It said it reflected the lack of storm activity within the third quarter and ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing. He said additionally, storm activity in January provided a sales benefit in the quarter.

00:38 Brooke DiPalma

And so everyone, everyone was running out to get perhaps salt for their driveways. Have we seen these major winter storms in January and this week as well. That impacted Home Depot as well. But this has been an ongoing struggle for Home Depot executives to really navigate this environment where we have seen a sluggish housing market. We know that existing home sales fell 8.4% in January compared to December.

00:54 Brooke DiPalma

And executives really doing everything they can to get consumers back in the door, offering pickup and convenience and trying to double down on value as well.

01:00 Speaker B

like the core the core thing we’d love to see would be housing turnover improve, right? Like mortgage rates coming down, existing home sales starting to inflect. That would be a big driver of large project activity. We just haven’t seen that thus far, but I’d say overall, you know, stable would be kind of the demand outlook.

01:17 Speaker A

What would change that, right? Because you know, we’ve already seen mortgage rates come down a little bit, but in your view, is there a number at which things start to more dramatically improve or is there something else that needs to happen before that can improve?

01:30 Speaker B

Yeah, we’ve done a lot of work on the team. I’d say, you know, seeing a mortgage rate that gets below probably five and a half would be a nice level psychologically. You know, we’ve we still have 50% of homes that are locked in below a 4% mortgage rate. To get below a 5 and a half percent level that probably see some improvement this year.

01:45 Speaker B

Then you’re starting to think about a bigger recovery back in 27 and 28, right? because the the opportunity here at Home Depot is a multi-year sort of recovery. The last couple of years have been challenged, you know, the giveback from the pandemic, obviously everything going on with rates. You know, you’d like to see this year be a year of gradual improvement. is kind of how we’ve coined it. And then you start to see the next couple of years seeing an inflection and demand. So I think I think the trend line is, you know, is gradual improvement with with uh mortgage rates coming down.

02:06 Speaker B

I think the the last thing I’d say, you know, consumer uncertainty out there has been difficult, right? Like 25, we had tariffs. Now we have tariffs coming off, but maybe we have more tariffs coming on. We’d love to see a little bit more certainty for the consumer so they can spend on some of these big ticket activities and spend back on the home.

Terms and Privacy Policy

Privacy Dashboard

More Info