Home Depot earnings test consumer spending as retail week begins

Home Depot heads into Tuesday’s earnings report with more than shareholders listening. For store managers, department leads and associates, the call will be a real-time read on whether contractor traffic, project demand and the big-ticket purchases that drive a Home Depot aisle are still holding up in a housing market with no clear sign of a turn.

The company is scheduled to report fiscal first-quarter 2026 results before the market opens on Tuesday, May 19, with a conference call set for 9:00 a.m. ET. Its annual meeting of shareholders is scheduled for Thursday, May 21. The timing puts Home Depot at the front of a crowded retail week that also includes Walmart, Target, Lowe’s and TJX Companies, and the lineup is being treated as a test of whether inflation-pressured households are still spending or pulling back.

That question matters inside Home Depot stores because the company’s business is tightly linked to housing turnover and the remodeling cycle that follows a home sale or purchase. When mortgage rates stay high and housing activity stalls, the ripple effects show up on the floor in fewer large projects, softer pro demand and a tighter read on what customers will buy now versus later. Home Depot has already said it does not see a clear catalyst for an inflection in housing activity, and tariff-related pricing remains a watch point after the company previously said it wanted to keep prices broadly steady but later signaled some modest increases could be necessary on certain items.

The last quarterly report showed how uneven the backdrop has been. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, Home Depot reported sales of $38.2 billion, down 3.8% from a year earlier, even as comparable sales rose 0.4% overall and 0.3% in the U.S. For fiscal 2025, net sales reached $164.7 billion and net earnings were $14.2 billion, or $14.23 per diluted share, with comparable sales up 0.3%. Those numbers kept Home Depot at the top of the home-improvement industry, but they also showed a business growing slowly in a market that has not fully normalized.

Analysts are looking for first-quarter earnings of about $3.41 to $3.42 per share on revenue around $41.5 billion to $41.6 billion. Home Depot’s own February outlook called for fiscal 2026 sales growth of 2.5% to 4.5%, comparable sales from flat to up 2.0%, and adjusted earnings per share growth of 0% to 4%. With shares reported near a 52-week low in mid-May, the bar is low for a relief rally and high for any sign that customers are delaying purchases, contractors are cautious, or pricing pressure is moving from a macro issue into the store.