Home Depot won't hike prices in response to tariffs, Q1 sales fall

(Sharecast News) - US do-it-yourself chain Home Depot on Tuesday held full-year sales forecasts and said it did not expect to raise prices in response to President Donald trump's tariffs. The company said it expected total sales to grow by 2.8% and comparable sales 1%. First-quarter earnings per share came in at $3.56 adjusted compared with expectations of $3.60 and revenue was $39.86bn against vs. $39.31bn expected by analysts.

Its forecast is based on the continuation of a U.S. agreement to temporarily lower tariffs to 30% on imports from China and to 10% for many other countries.

In the three months to May 4 net income fell to $3.43bn from $3.6bn a year earlier.

"Because of our scale, the great partnerships we have with our suppliers and productivity that we continue to drive in our business, we intend to generally maintain our current pricing levels across our portfolio," chief financial officer Richard McPhail told CNBC in an interview.

he added that more than half of what the company sells comes from the US and had worked to diversify the source of imports over the past several years, including cutting back on those from China.

By this time next year, no single country outside of the US will represent more than 10% of the company's purchases, he said.

Home Depot's pricing strategy is at odds with Walmart, which said last week that it would have to raise prices as soon as late May to cover higher costs from tariffs.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com