Home Depot outlines 2026 plan to grow market share and Pro sales

Home Depot’s annual shareholder meeting laid out a clear operating message for the floor: stores, digital, fulfillment and the Pro business are being treated as one system, and the company wants associates to make that system work harder. The proxy says Home Depot plans to grow market share by strengthening its core business, building a better interconnected experience and expanding sales to pros through its ecosystem of capabilities. In practical terms, that points to more pressure on Pro desks, more handoffs between aisle service and online ordering, more delivery coordination and more attention to turning a contractor visit into a larger, repeat relationship.

The meeting was held virtually at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time, with the record date for voting set for March 23, 2026 and access information sent beginning April 7. That governance setup matters because the company also used the meeting to reinforce how it wants to spend money: reinvest in the business first, then pay dividends, then return excess cash through share repurchases. Home Depot said it put $3.7 billion into capital expenditures in fiscal 2025, returned $9.2 billion to shareholders through cash dividends and raised its quarterly dividend 2.2 percent, from $2.25 to $2.30 a share.

The financial backdrop explains why management is leaning so hard into the Pro strategy. Fiscal 2025 sales were $164.7 billion, operating income was $20.9 billion and net earnings were $14.2 billion. Return on invested capital was 25.7 percent, down from 31.3 percent in fiscal 2024, and fiscal 2025 had 52 weeks instead of 53. Just two days before the meeting, Home Depot reported first-quarter fiscal 2026 sales of $41.8 billion, up 4.8 percent, with comparable sales up 0.6 percent companywide and 0.4 percent in the U.S. The company reaffirmed fiscal 2026 guidance for sales growth of about 2.5 percent to 4.5 percent, about 15 new stores and adjusted diluted earnings per share growth of roughly flat to 4.0 percent.

The Pro push is not happening in a vacuum. In September 2025, Home Depot completed the $5.5 billion acquisition of GMS through SRS Distribution, and later said Mingledorff’s added 42 locations across five Southeastern states. Home Depot said the professional distribution platform now spans more than 1,300 SRS branches, 325 customer-facing warehouses and roughly 16,000 delivery assets. The company has also said SRS was bought as a platform for growth. For stores, that means more emphasis on sales force support, delivery and trade credit, especially as large pros still use Home Depot heavily for fill-in and emergency purchases.

Shareholders also voted on 12 directors, KPMG as auditor, executive compensation, charter amendments and several shareholder proposals on plastics, biodiversity and data privacy. For associates, the real test is simpler than the proxy language: whether the next few quarters bring more staffing, better tools and clearer training, or simply more work wrapped in a connected-retail slogan.