(Reuters) -Home Depot Inc beat quarterly same-store sales estimates on Tuesday, buoyed by steady demand for its tools, paint and building materials during the holiday season.
Spending on do-it-yourself home projects, which surged at the height of the health crisis when people were stuck indoors, has so far held up better than feared even as restrictions ease and encourage a return to pre-pandemic lifestyles.
To capture that demand, Home Depot has been aggressively spending to minimize shortages due to global supply-chain disruptions, with the company also chartering a cargo ship to tide over the pandemic-driven shipping delays.
Home Depot forecast full-year sales growth to be slightly positive, while analysts had expected a 2.5% increase in sales.
Same-store sales at the No. 1 U.S. home improvement chain rose 8.1% in the fourth quarter ended Jan. 30, compared with analysts’ estimates of a 4.9% increase, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Home Depot, whose shares were up about 1.5% amid a broader decline in markets, also announced a 15% increase in quarterly dividend.
(Reporting by Uday Sampath and Aditi Sebastian in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
