The share price of the U.S. and multinational home improvement retailer Home Depot initially jumped $10, from under $380 to nearly $390, or 2.5%, in the first few minutes after the opening bell on May 20. The price later dropped to test the $380+ area again, but was bought back to climb by nearly 2% once again. This probably consolidated the overall positive contribution of the corporation's quarterly earnings released that day to a more than 15% rising tide since its April 9's low at $328.60, when the market just got rid of the scourge of global tariff war in its most acute form.

Home Depot's sales clearly beats the analyst pool's estimates. Its overall comparable sales slid by 0.3% in the last three months, but reportedly hurt by weaker results in February because of improper weather. All in all, the company posted net sales of $39.86 billion, that is 1.5% better vs average expectations of $39.25 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. At the same time, adjusted EPS (equity per share) came out at $3.56 vs $3.60 expected and $3.63 in the same season of 2024, but all those numbers look much higher than the one-off drop in profit numbers to only $3.13 per share in the Christmas quarter.

Two points were seemingly most important for keeping the investment sentiment on a positive side. The first point is that The Home Depot promised to hold its consumer prices unchanged despite tariffs' threat, citing resilient demand from professional contractors to lead to maintaining its former annual forecast unchanged. The other one is that the company's CFO Richard McPhail ensured that in the next 12 months, no single country outside the U.S. will represent more than 10% of its purchases", after it has cut its previously high exposure to China substantially in recent years. A well-diversified supply chain strategy should help Home Depot to "generally maintain current pricing levels across its portfolio", he added.

The HD's oath to keep prices steady are especially vital in contrast to Walmart’s warning only several days before that the major U.S. discounter may have to implement higher prices tags due to tariffs, which immediately drew the ire of U.S. president Donald Trump, who claimed that Walmart should "eat" the import tariffs and not to pass on the costs to consumers. This public controversy hasn't actually stopped Walmart from continuing its upside rally, but Walmart appears to have much more fundamental reasons for growth, and so a similar story with Home Depot could hurt its stock's performance.

Now, even though Home Depot could hardly be called a stable growth stock and it may be subject to moderate volatility as before, the Home Depot's ultimate price targets above $425, just corresponding to its January's highs of 2025, still prove their right to be kept in mind for the rest of the year. This happens despite some consumer-facing companies have shared rather sad quarterly results, pulling down their YoY forecasts.