Dive Brief:
- The Home Depot will maintain its focus on improving experience for professional contractors to drive sales growth, according to executives on a Q4 2024 earnings call Tuesday. Comparable pro sales outpaced comparable sales to DIY customers during the quarter.
- Initiatives including the launch of an in-store customer-focused manager role and enhancements to an app for employees drove success with pros of all sizes, but there is still more work ahead, according to Ann-Marie Campbell, senior executive vice president of U.S. stores and operations.
- The home improvement retailer is moving forward with care. “Our focus is to refine and really perfect what we're seeing, and that takes time in a market, especially when you're building relationships,” Campbell said on the call. “We don't want to create new relationships with our new capabilities, with our pros, and then have big failure points.”
Dive Insight:
Home Depot is continuing to lean into the professional contractor experience to help offset the impact of high interest rates, which weigh on DIY customer activity.
“Our strategic priorities remain creating the best interconnected shopping experience, growing our pro wallet share through a unique ecosystem of capabilities and building new stores,” President and CEO Ted Decker said during the call.
Sales grew 14.1% year over year to $39.7 billion during the fourth quarter, according to a company earnings release. Same-store sales grew at a slower rate year over year, 0.8% worldwide and 1.3% in the U.S.
Sales growth with all professional cohorts was positive, according to Campbell. Additionally, Home Depot’s investments in pro customers drove more than $1 billion in annual incremental sales in 17 markets.
“Over the last few years, we've made investments in our stores as well as through our full ecosystem to improve the shopping experience for all of our pros regardless of their purchase occasion, whether they are shopping in store, online or getting delivery from stores or distribution centers,” Campbell said.
The retailer’s efforts are at different stages of maturity in each of the 17 geographic markets, according to Campbell. Home Depot will continue investing in the pro experience, improving the delivery experience and connectivity between e-commerce and stores.
One ongoing development is the construction of additional flatbed distribution centers, which deliver materials directly to project sites. These sites reduce the number of deliveries made from stores, reducing clutter from staged orders and improving associate availability, according to Campbell.
