The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 5 of 10

Scot Ciccarelli: Got it. Thanks, Bill.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Jackie Sussman: Hi, there. This is Jackie Sussman on for Simeon. Thanks so much for taking our question. You were speaking earlier on small projects replacing large projects. Can you drill into the backlog a bit more? How much have they come off of peak? How far above normal levels are they? And is there any evidence you’re seeing that consumers are fully pushing off or canceling projects rather than just trading down? Thanks.

Richard McPhail: Well, I’ll start on that one. And if we rely on publicly published surveys, the one that we watch is the National Association of Homebuilders Index. We have seen backlogs declined sequentially. But yes, they are well above the historical average. And so you would really say the professional customer has been oversubscribed for so many years that they still have a full book of business, just not maybe oversubscribed. They may be taking phone calls again, but they are very healthy. Again, if you think about the historical average, and you can look this up, but historical average being a score for 50, the index is still at 61, so down from peak but higher than average.

Ted Decker: In addition to the publicly available indexes, obviously, we have millions of Pros and the field sales force that Hector mentioned. So anecdotally, we are getting loads of feedback from our customer base. They are still busy and engaged with those backlogs, but it’s their commentary to our sales force that they are smaller. So, that’s where we get the color on that dynamic.

Jackie Sussman: Got it. That’s helpful color. And just one quick follow-up. Shrink was the only real call-out on the gross margin line, can you talk about how that trended in the quarter? Did it get worse or any better? And are there any actions that you are taking to kind of mitigate that impact going forward?

Richard McPhail: From a financial perspective, shrink has been a consistent pressure over the last several quarters and even the last few years, and it’s something we are tackling every day. And Ann, maybe talk a little bit…

Ann-Marie Campbell: No, we are certainly in the battle in retail as we kind of think about shrink. But we have always continued to lean into initiatives that we have seen that can have impact to mitigate overall. And I know it’s early as we think about the Inform Act, but the Inform Act is one of the key components as we think about organized retail crime that I think will help give us a little bit more visibility in some of the things that are happening out there. But certainly, it’s been largely in line with what we have seen in the last several quarters. We certainly have key initiatives to help mitigate that. And we need our kind of government partners to help on their end as well to help us in retail to really mitigate what we have seen out there.

Jackie Sussman: Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Steven Zaccone with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Steven Zaccone: Great. Good morning. Thanks very much for taking my question. I was hoping you could comment a bit more about the homeowner engagement that you talked about. It sounds like it was a bit of a sequential improvement. Was that largely weather-driven, or are you actually seeing some elasticity of demand as inflation eases in some categories?

Page 5 of 10