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Home Depot’s sales improved during its fiscal second quarter as consumers remained focused on smaller projects amid cost concerns and economic uncertainty, but its performance missed Wall Street’s expectations.Revenue for the three months ended August 3 climbed to $45.28 billion from $43.18 billion, but fell short of the $45.41 billion that analysts polled by FactSet were looking for.Sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, rose 1%. In the U.S., comparable store sales increased 1.4%.Customer transactions declined less than 1% in the quarter. The amount shoppers spent rose to $90.01 per average receipt from $88.90 in the prior-year period.“Our second quarter results were in line with our expectations,” Chair and CEO Ted Decker said in a statement on Tuesday. “The momentum that began in the back half of last year continued throughout the first half as customers engaged more broadly in smaller home improvement projects.”Home improvement retailers like Home Depot have been dealing with homeowners putting off bigger projects because of increased borrowing costs and lingering concerns about inflation.The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.Sales of previously occupied homes have slumped as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discourage home shoppers.Sales of such homes in the U.S. slid in June to the slowest pace since last September as mortgage rates remained high and the national median sales price climbed to an all-time high of $435,300.Home sales fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.Home Depot earned $4.55 billion, or $4.58 per share, for the second quarter. A year ago, the Atlanta-based company earned $4.56 billion, or $4.60 per share.Removing certain items, earnings were $4.68 per share. Wall Street was looking for earnings of $4.72 per share.The company reaffirmed its fiscal 2025 forecast for total sales growth of about 2.8%. It still expects adjusted earnings to decline about 2% from $15.24 per share a year earlier. Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Holly Andrzejewski hadn’t yet welcomed her and her family’s first guests to the Atlantic Inn on Hatteras Island when she had to start rescheduling them, as Hurricane Erin neared North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Tuesday and threatened to whip up wild waves and tropical force winds.Although the monster storm is expected to stay offshore, evacuations were ordered on such barrier islands along the Carolina coast as Hatteras as authorities warned the storm could churn up dangerous rip currents and swamp roads with waves of 15 feet (4.6 meters).Andrzejewski and her husband purchased the bed-and-breakfast, known as the oldest inn on the island, less than a week ago. By Monday they had brought in all the outdoor furniture and made sure their daughter and her boyfriend, who are the innkeepers, had generators, extra water and flashlights as they stayed behind to keep an eye on the property.“It’s just one of those things where you know this is always a possibility and it could happen, and you just make the best out of it. Otherwise you wouldn’t live at the beach,” said Andrzejewski, who will also remain on the island, at her home about a 15 minutes’ drive away.Erin lashed part of the Caribbean with rain and wind Monday. Forecasters are confident it will curl north and away from the eastern U.S., but tropical storm and surge watches were issued for much of the Outer Banks.Officials at the Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington, North Carolina, reported to the National Weather Service rescuing at least 60 swimmers from rip currents Monday.By early Tuesday, Erin had lost some strength from previous days but was still a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph), the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was about 675 miles (1,090 kilometers) southwest of Bermuda and 770 miles (1,240 kilometers) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras and was moving northwest at a slower 7 mph (11 kph).A tropical storm warning remained in effect for the Turks and Caicos Islands, where government services were suspended, some ports were closed and residents were ordered to stay home.On North Carolina’s Outer Banks, coastal flooding was expected to begin Tuesday and continue through Thursday.The evacuations on Hatteras Island and Ocracoke came at the height of tourist season on the thin stretch of low-lying barrier islands that jut into the Atlantic Ocean and are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges.A year ago, Hurricane Ernesto stayed hundreds of miles offshore yet still produced high surf and swells that caused coastal damage.This time there are concerns that several days of heavy surf, high winds and waves could wash out parts of the main highway. Some routes could be impassible for days.This is the first evacuation for Ocracoke since Hurricane Dorian in 2019 caused the most damage in the island’s recorded history.Tommy Hutcherson, who owns the community’s only grocery store, said the island has mostly bounced back. He’s optimistic this storm won’t be as destructive.“But you just never know. I felt the same way about Dorian and we really got smacked,” he said.Scientists have linked the rapid intensification of hurricanes in the Atlantic to climate change. Global warming is causing the atmosphere to hold more water vapor and is spiking ocean temperatures, and warmer waters give hurricanes fuel to unleash more rain and strengthen more quickly.Bermuda will experience the most severe threat Thursday evening, said Phil Rogers, director of the Bermuda Weather Service. By then, waters could swell up to 24 feet (7 meters).“Surfers, swimmers and boaters must resist the temptation to go out. The waters will be very dangerous and lives will be placed at risk,” acting Minister of National Security Jache Adams said. Associated Press journalists Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, and Julie Walker in New York contributed to this report. Ben Finley, John Seewer and Hallie Golden, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Clippy has become an unlikely protest symbol against Big Tech. The trend started when YouTuber Louis Rossmann posted a video earlier this month titled Change your profile picture to clippy. Im serious. His followers answered the call and now across YouTube, X, and other platforms, profile photos are turning into the iconic Microsoft Office Assistant as a silent protest against tech companies encroachment into daily life. The consumer rights activist, whose content focuses on electronic repair and right-to-repair topics, hopes to rally consumers against practices like data harvesting for AI training, selling user information to data brokers, planned obsolescence, censorship, and ransomware. I didn’t label it a protest because Im not asking people to boycott a specific product or company. Im not telling you to stop shopping at Target or throw iPhones away, thats not the point, he tells Fast Company. This is one small element in a broader long-term movement for consumer rights and ownership I’ve been trying to build with my audience for over 11 years. Now the movement has found its mascot. From Office 98 to 2004, Clippy, Microsofts googly-eyed paperclip, was infamous for popping up with offers of help while you were trying to get on with work. Annoying as he might have been, Clippy could always be dismissed or switched off altogether. Thats the point. If you told Clippy that you were having a bad day, he wasn’t going to use that information to try and figure out which advertiser to sell you to, nor was he trying to steal your personal data or get you to purchase other Microsoft products. He had no ulterior motives, Rossmann explained in the now viral video. Clippy just wanted to help. The video has since racked up more than 3.2 million views, much to Rossmanns surprise. This was a throwaway video, something I recorded talking about what was on my mind that day, he tells Fast Company. I am very happy that the consumer rights database, that our nonprofit has been focused on building, has been exploding with edits and new stories over the past week and a half. People aren’t just changing their profile photos, they’re actually doing the grunt work. The growing number of those joining the movement is a clear message to tech companies that consumers see what they are doing and arent happy about it. Clippy would never add AI overview to every single search result, wrote one user in the comments section. Clippy would never take your data for AI learning, wrote another. Clippy would never read my menstrual data from my period tracking app so it can sell my attention to advertisers, wrote a third. But changing your profile picture to Clippy is just the first step in a wider shift Rossmann hopes to bring about. Its a signal that tells others ‘Im not okay with this, and youre not alone if you feel the same,'” he says. “The goal is to get people who would otherwise be apathetic thinking ‘there’s no point in pushing back because nobody cares’ to think twice about that defeatist mindset. As one Clippy avatar wrote in the comments: It looks like youre trying to take back your freedom. Would you like help?
Category:
E-Commerce
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