Sales to both professional and do-it-yourself customers grew in the third quarter for The Home Depot Inc.  Professional customer purchases surpassed those of DIYers, CEO Craig Menear said on the company’s earnings call yesterday.

“We saw a healthy balance of growth from both our Pro and DIY categories, with Pro sales once again outpacing DIY sales in the quarter,” Menear told analysts, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha. “We believe that the work we’re doing to enhance the service capabilities for the unique needs of the Pro customer continues to resonate.”

Home Depot didn’t break out Q3 online sales from professional, what it calls Pro, customers, but executives noted on the year-end earnings call in February that Pro customers account for about 45% of total sales. Based on that rate, sales to professionals accounted for $11.26 billion in the quarter.

Home Depot said overall online sales accounted for 6.2% of total sales in the quarter, which yields online sales of $1.55 billion.

Natural disasters affected store sales in the quarter, Menear said. “Though our store teams worked tirelessly to reopen stores as quick as possible in the wake of these events, several of our stores, particularly in the areas like Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and St. Croix, were forced to remain closed for an extended period of time,” he said.

For fiscal Q3 ended Oct. 29, Home Depot, No. 47 in the 2018 B2B E-Commerce 300, reported:

• Total sales of $25.03 billion, an 8.1% increase compared with $23.15 billion in Q3 of the prior year.
• Gross profit of $8.64 billion, up 7.5% from $8.04 billion, resulting in a gross profit margin of 34.5% flat compared with 34.7% in the same quarter last year.
• Net earnings of $2.165 billion, up 10.0% from $1.969 billion.

For the first nine months of fiscal Q3 ended Oct. 29, Home Depot reported:

• Total sales of $77.02 billion, a 6.4% increase from $72.39 billion in Q3 of the prior year.
• Gross profit of $26.26 billion, up 6.1% from $24.76 billion, resulting in a gross profit margin of 34.1% flat compared with 34.2% a year earlier.
• Net earnings of $6.85 billion, up 10.3% from $6.21 billion.

Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a twice-weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes DigitalCommerce360.com, Internet Retailer and Internet Health Management. Follow Bill Briggs, senior editor, on Twitter @BBriggsB2B.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new B2BecNews content is published.