Should you buy Home Depot stock after solid Q2 results?

Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD) is in the green this morning after reporting better-than-expected results for its fiscal second quarter and reiterating its full-year guidance.

Is Home Depot stock a buy here?

Inventories up 38% year-on-year remained a challenge for the home improvement retailer. Still, Michael Lasser (Retail Analyst at UBS) said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”:

Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis?

Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.

Home Depot is one of the best operated retailers on the planet. They’re taking share, they’re leveraging their expenses and they’re navigating through a really tricky environment quite well.

Transactions were down about 3.0% in the recent quarter. Still, he recommends that you buy Home Depot stock that has upside to $360 – another 10% increase on top of today’s gain.

Consumer is in a relatively good shape; it’s going to remain relatively steady. So, Home Depot is a stock, I think, you can make money on especially if you look over the next twelve months.

Home Depot Q2 financial highlights

• Net income came in at $5.17 billion versus the year-ago $4.81 billion
• EPS jumped to $5.05 from $4.53 in the same quarter last year
• Sales went up 6.5% year-over-year to a record $43.79 billion
• Consensus was $4.95 of per-share earnings on $43.36 billion in sales
• Comparable sales increased 5.8% – handily beating the expectations
• Average ticket was 9.1% bigger than Q2 of the previous year

Other notable figures and future outlook

Other notable figures in the earnings report include a 10 basis points hit to gross margin as cost of sales shot up 5.5%, as per the earnings press release.

For fiscal 2022, the retail behemoth forecasts about a 3.0% increase in sales. It expects mid-single-digit growth in EPS this year versus the consensus for a 6.0% increase. Home Depot stock is currently down nearly 20% versus the start of the year.