The Home Depot Updates Strategic Priorities; Confirms Fiscal Year 2012 Sales And Earnings Per Share Guidance And Outlines Long-Term Financial Targets

ATLANTA, June 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Home Depot®, the world's largest home improvement retailer, will today outline progress on its key strategic priorities and discuss its long-term financial targets at its 2012 Investor and Analyst Conference. 

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20030502/HOMEDEPOTLOGO )

Today's conference will begin at 9 a.m. ET and will be available in its entirety through a live webcast and replay at ir.homedepot.com in the Events & Presentations section.

Strategic Priorities

The Company will provide an update on its four areas of strategic focus: customer service; product authority; disciplined capital allocation, productivity and efficiency; and interconnected retail.

• For customer service, the Company is focused on creating an emotional connection with customers, putting customers first and simplifying the business. 
• For product authority, the Company is focused on its merchandising transformation and portfolio strategy, including innovation, assortment and value.  
• For disciplined capital allocation, productivity and efficiency, the Company is focused on continuous operational improvement, incremental supply chain benefits and shareholder value built through higher returns on invested capital and total value returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases.
• For interconnected retail, the Company is focused on building a competitive platform across all commerce channels.

"The Home Depot has a strong foundation of customer service, product authority and value creation. We will continue to build on our strategic priorities as we look to 2015 and beyond," said Frank Blake, chairman & CEO.  

Fiscal Year 2012 Guidance

The Company reaffirmed its sales and diluted earnings-per-share guidance for fiscal 2012. The Company still expects sales to be up approximately 4.6% for the year on a 53 week basis and diluted earnings per share to be up approximately 17% to $2.90 for the year. In addition, the Company updated its fiscal year 2012 share repurchase guidance and now expects share repurchases of approximately $4.0 billion. This is an increase of $500 million from the guidance provided in May 2012, but given the timing of the share repurchases, the increase will not have a material impact to diluted earnings per share for fiscal 2012.  

Long-Term Operating Targets

In June of 2009, the Company announced a long term operating target of a 10 percent operating profit and 15 percent return on invested capital. The Company anticipates achieving this target by fiscal year end and has now set out a new long term, fiscal 2015, operating target as follows:

• Operating margin of approximately 12 percent
• Return on invested capital of approximately 24 percent

The Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer, with 2,254 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces, Mexico and China. In fiscal 2011, The Home Depot had sales of $70.4 billion and earnings of $3.9 billion. The Company employs more than 300,000 associates. The Home Depot's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: HD) and is included in the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 index. 

Certain statements contained herein constitute "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may relate to, among other things, the demand for our products and services, net sales growth, comparable store sales, state of the economy, state of the residential construction, housing and home improvement markets, state of the credit markets, including mortgages, home equity loans and consumer credit, inventory and in-stock positions, commodity price inflation and deflation, implementation of store and supply chain initiatives, continuation of stock repurchase programs, net earnings performance, earnings per share, capital allocation and expenditures, liquidity, the effect of adopting certain accounting standards, return on invested capital, management of our purchasing or customer credit policies, stock-based compensation expense,  the effect of accounting charges, the ability to issue debt on terms and at rates acceptable to us, store openings and closures, expense leverage, guidance for fiscal 2012 and beyond and financial outlook.  Forward-looking statements are based on currently available information and our current assumptions, expectations and projections about future events. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to future events, risks and uncertainties – many of which are beyond our control or are currently unknown to us – as well as potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to those described in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," and elsewhere in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended January 29, 2012 and in our subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we do not undertake to update these statements other than as required by law. You are advised, however, to review any further disclosures we make on related subjects in our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE The Home Depot