Analyst urges selling Home Depot after earnings, while markets stay mixed

Jesse Cohen’s one-week call to sell Home Depot shares may sound sharp on Wall Street, but it does not amount to a broad verdict on the company. He put the stock on his May 16 list of “1 Stock to Buy, 1 Stock to Sell This Week: Nvidia, Home Depot,” using InvestingPro data, even as Home Depot still carries a Buy consensus with 33 analysts on Investing.com and a Moderate Buy consensus on MarketBeat.

That matters for associates because a lone sell call rarely changes the daily reality in stores. What can change is the tone from above. If investors start pressing harder on margins, managers may face tighter labor budgets, slower store investment and more scrutiny over where every payroll hour goes, especially during the spring and summer project rushes when staffing decisions are already tight.

Home Depot’s own numbers give the bearish case some room to breathe, but not much drama. On Feb. 24, 2026, the company reported fourth-quarter sales of $38.2 billion, down 3.8% from a year earlier because the quarter had 13 weeks instead of 14. Comparable sales still rose 0.4%, and U.S. comparable sales rose 0.3%. For fiscal 2025, sales reached $164.7 billion, up 3.2%, with net earnings of $14.2 billion, or $14.23 per diluted share.

Ted Decker called the results “largely in-line” with expectations and cited “ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing,” while saying underlying demand was relatively stable after adjusting for storms. Home Depot also raised its quarterly dividend 1.3% to $2.33 per share, payable March 26 to shareholders of record March 12, marking its 156th consecutive quarter of paying a cash dividend.

The company’s December 9, 2025 investor day was even more telling for what associates should watch next. Home Depot outlined preliminary fiscal 2026 sales growth of 2.5% to 4.5%, EPS growth of approximately flat to 4%, and a home improvement market range of negative 1% to positive 1%. That is not the setup for a major expansion story. It is a setting where every extra payroll dollar, display reset and store project gets examined more closely.

The housing backdrop remains mixed too. The National Association of Realtors said existing-home sales fell 3.6% month over month in March 2026 to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million, even as Lawrence Yun later projected a 14% rebound in home sales for 2026. For Home Depot workers, the headline sell call is less important than the pressure it can reinforce: fewer easy sales, more margin discipline and less room for waste.