We recently published Jim Cramer Said AI Is A “Souped-Up Google” As He Discussed These 11 Stocks. The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.
Home improvement retailer The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)’s shares have gained a modest 5% year-to-date as the firm has struggled in a high-interest-rate environment. However, over the past month, the shares have gained 8% driven by catalysts such as its second quarter earnings report, which saw the firm outline that its same store sales growth stood at 1% overall and 4% in the US. The growth indicated to investors that there was some life in The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)’s market. Cramer discussed the firm’s earnings call:
“[On short term rates falling but high end not budging] It’s very interesting because on the Home Depot call, which was such an excellent call, they talked about the need to be able to at least get the short term rates down for home equity loans cause it’s not having to do it, not having many remodeling. Which, you need either remodel, or sales. Now sales is the long end, but remodel is the short end. They’ll take either and they are the biggest.”
A man uses home hardware tool
The CNBC TV host discussed The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) in detail after its earnings. Here is what he said:
“We got results from Cramer fave, Home Depot, a stock I’m very happy to own for the Charitable Trust, but the numbers confused a lot of people… The quarter was good. See, you can’t judge earnings by the headline numbers alone… For starters, management emphasized that the momentum they saw in the back half of last year carried into the first half of this year…
The second positive, what’s known as the cadence… of the quarter. While Home Depot’s same-store sales were up just 1%, eh, right, not so great, things look different when you examine them month to month to month…
Management highlighted they’re seeing broad-based strength in the business with… 12 of the 16 merchandising categories posting positive same-store sales. That’s very positive… Now, you might be worried about the impact of tariffs on Home Depot’s profitability, but in the conference call, management reminded us that 50% of their goods are sourced domestically. So there will be a tariff hit, but it will be much smaller than you might’ve expected… As a result, management expects to see gross margin improvement in the second half of the year… No one expected that, believe me.
Here’s the bottom line: Despite the softer headline numbers, the details we got from Home Depot show a business that’s gaining strength, especially with the prospect of lower interest rates on the horizon. That’s why I’m confident that Home Depot’s a long-term story, and why the stock rallied in response to the quarter that many investors wrote off immediately. It’s just so intact. That’s because they didn’t listen to the conference call. Now, if you’re a member of the investing club, you would know we are holding this one for the long term. And the move up that we saw last week, believe me, you ain’t seeing nothing yet from Home Depot.”
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of HD as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than HD and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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