Lowe's Posts Higher Profit, Lowers Outlook

By Kimberly Chin 

Lowe's Cos. lowered its full-year earnings targets as the home-improvement retailer continues to work through operational challenges, such as managing costs and improving inventory.

For the year, Lowe's now expects adjusted earnings between $5.45 and $5.65 a share, lower than its previous guidance of $6.00 to $6.10 a share.

Shares of the retailer fell 9.2% in premarket trading.

Since Chief Executive Marvin Ellison took the helm in July, he has called for vast improvements in the company's inventory, customer service and work processes. Lowe's is now stocking more faster-selling items while reducing inventory of lower-performing ones.

Those steps, along with cost pressure and what Mr. Ellison called ineffective legacy pricing tools, led to margin compression, which weighs on profitability. The company's gross margin was 31.46% of sales in the latest quarter, compared with 33.11% a year earlier.

Earlier this week, Lowe's agreed to buy a retail-analytics platform from Boomerang Commerce, a move that the company expects would help bolster its strategic and data-driven pricing and merchandise assortment decisions.

Lowe's has said it decided to sell the assets of its businesses in Mexico rather than exit the retail operations as initially planned. This resulted in a tax benefit of $82 million in the period, the company said.

Net income for the quarter was $1.05 billion, or $1.31 a share, up 5.9% from the comparable quarter a year earlier. Its bottom line benefited from lower expenses and taxes. Analysts polled by Refinitiv were expecting a profit of $1.31 a share.

Excluding special items, Lowe's said earnings were $1.22 a share. Analysts had expected $1.33 a share.

Net sales rose 2.2% to $17.74 billion from a year ago. Analysts estimated revenue of $17.66 billion.

Comparable-store sales -- a common metric in retail based on revenue at stores open at least one year -- rose 3.5%. Analysts polled by Consensus Metrix expected a 3.2% rise.

Meanwhile, its home-improvement rival Home Depot Inc. reported comparable sales rose 2.5% for its latest quarter, below analysts' estimates.

Write to Kimberly Chin at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 22, 2019 08:59 ET (12:59 GMT)

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