00:00Housing market obviously in a bit of a tough place at the moment. How is Home Depot navigating that?
00:06Hi, thanks for having me. Yes, as you mentioned, the second quarter results came in better than
00:11expected. It sounds like that DIY consumer is holding in a little bit better than expected.
00:17Pros are still spending. Guidance was reaffirmed. I think that's all positive. I will say, though,
00:23looking at that reaffirmed guidance, it looks like there's a lot of uncertainty heading into
00:27the back half because it sort of implies more of a slowdown in that top line growth as we get
00:34into
00:34the second half, meaning they're not definitely not expecting any rebound in the housing market
00:40and maybe continued pressure on consumers with some uncertainty on that spending.
00:45Home improvement is expensive, Lindsay. We were just talking about it moments ago. You know that
00:48we all do. Anyone that's tried to renovate anything in the last five years has seen the cost of it,
00:52and the cost is still climbing. Lindsay, when you start to see things like higher input costs,
00:57starting to come through a business like this, what's the price tolerance of the end consumer
01:01like at the moment? That's a massive discussion for economists across this nation. What's consumer
01:06price tolerance look like for a company like Home Depot? Yeah, these rising input costs are exerting
01:14pain on retailers all over. And I think that for home improvement, it's sort of no different than the
01:20broader landscape. So that lower income consumer has been squeezed for some time. They have really
01:25pulled back. The middle income consumer is also starting to pull back. So a lot of the discretionary
01:30spending is really coming out of that higher income consumer. And we have to see, you know,
01:35when is the breaking point for them and when might they pull back? I will say I also cover some
01:40of the
01:41higher end like home furnishings, retailers like an RH. And, you know, they are seeing pretty solid
01:47demand for these home refreshes, whether it's projects or furnishings coming from that higher income
01:53consumer. So, so far, I think that they are holding in.
Comments