The Home Depot Inc. grew Q4 and full-year sales in 2017, boosted by hefty online sales jumps.
The home improvement retailer’s business-to-business professional, or Pro, contractor and builder customers accounted for $45.41 billion in sales for the year, or about 45%, a spokesman says.
That’s about the same percentage as in fiscal 2016 and, although the ratio hasn’t changed, Pro sales grew last year, CEO and president Craig Menear told analysts on the company’s year-end earnings call yesterday. “Overall, we’re very pleased with our Pro business in 2017 and we continue to see growth there,” he said.
Home Depot does not break out online sales to B2B customers, but Menear cited the company’s commitment to e-commerce in 2017, including rollout of an e-commerce platform developed in-house. “We implemented a new e-commerce platform, enhanced our search and mobile functionality, increased checkout speed, and expanded chat functionality to improve the customer experience with our online contact centers,” he said on the call, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha. “We continue to invest in our digital properties and it has increased traffic and conversion. Versus prior year, our online sales grew 21.0% in the fourth quarter and 21.5% in fiscal 2017, now representing 6.7% of our total sales.”
Based on that sales percentage, e-commerce accounted for $6.76 billion last year.
For fiscal Q4 ended Jan. 28, Home Depot, No. 47 in the 2018 B2B E-Commerce 300, reported:
- Total sales of $23.88 billion, a 7.5% increase from with $22.21 billion in Q4 of the prior year;
- Gross profit of $8.093 billion, up 7.1% from $7.553 billion, resulting in a gross profit margin of 33.9% that was flat compared with 34.0% in the same quarter last year;
- Net earnings of $1.779 billion, up 2.0% from $1.744 billion.
For the fiscal year ended Jan. 28, Home Depot reported:
- Total sales of $100.90 billion, a 6.7% increase from $94.60 billion in fiscal 2016;
- Gross profit of $34.36 billion, up 6.3% from $32.31 billion, resulting in a gross profit margin of 34.1%, flat compared with 34.2% a year earlier;
- Net earnings of $8.630 billion, up 8.5% from $7.957 billion.
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