Home Depot Conference Call Highlights

Home Depot

reported its second quarter earnings on Tuesday. Shares of the company are up six percent. Below are some key highlights from its call: • Sales for the second quarter were $23.8 billion, up 5.7% from last year. • Comp sales were positive 5.8% and our diluted earnings per share were $1.52. • Our U.S. stores had a positive comp of 6.4%. • Our Mexican business positively comped for the quarter, making it 43 quarters. • Total company transactions grew by 4.1% for the quarter while comp ticket increased 1.7%. • Transactions for tickets under $50 representing approximately 20% of our U.S. sales were up 3.1% for the second quarter. • Transactions for tickets over $900 also representing approximately 20% of our U.S. sales, were up 8.4% in the second quarter. • Our total company gross margin was 34.3% for the quarter, a decline of one basis point from last year. • Interest and other expense for the second quarter was $191 million, a $19 million or 11% increase from last year. • We now own approximately 11.8 million shares or 6% of HD Supply outstanding shares. • This included 6.2 million shares repurchased in the open markets and 16.9 million shares repurchased through an accelerated share repurchase or ASR program. • We are listing fiscal 2014 diluted earnings per share growth guidance by $0.10 and now expect fiscal 2014 diluted earnings per share to increase approximately 20.2% to $4.52.