Growing payback of most exciting hypermarket chains in North America pleases the sight of investors, following another hot 1% jump in U.S. retail sales month-on-month in July. Lowe's, which is an operator of nearly 2,200 home improvement warehouses, freshly beat consensus estimates to post its EPS (earnings per share) of $4.10 for the quarter ended on August 2, while previous three quarters provided $3.06, $1.77 and $3.27 per share and average forecasts for the last quarter came out at $3.96. The fact that Lowe's sales fell short at $23.59 billion vs consensus estimate of $23.93 billion is not so much important at the moment, as the current number showed a 10.4% surplus QoQ and nearly 27% gain compared to $18.6 billion for the last Christmas quarter. Neither a challenging backdrop for homeowners with rather discretionary spending, nor unfavourable weather conditions to impact on seasonal and outdoor categories of items, prevented the company from delivering strong operating performance. Marvin Ellison, Lowe's Chairman, president and CEO, announced the company's own full-year expectation of total sales at $82.7 to $83.2 billion, down from its previous forecast of $84 to $85 billion, with adjusted EPS projections within a range between $11.70 and $11.90, slightly lower than Lowe's earlier forward guidance of $12.00 to $12.30. However, even some cutting in annual profit numbers did not push the Wall Street crowd to enter a sell-off mode for the stock.

Lowe's is trading around $244 per share on Tuesday's pre-market, which is about 0.5% higher than the closing price on Monday, August 19, also 7% higher than the local low detected one week ago and nearly 12% higher year-to-date, with more attempts to repeat all-time highs around $263 per share (December 2021 and March 2024) are on the table. After the great Walmart release just a few days before, this is another sectoral brick in the broader and seemingly inviolable S&P 500 recovery wall. More contributions from retail monsters including TJX and Target are scheduled for tomorrow morning on Wall Street.