Home Depot, Inc. (The)

Greetings and welcome to the Home Depot's first quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Isabel Jancy. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Christine, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Home Depot's first quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining us on our call today are Craig Menear, Chairman and CEO, Ted Decker, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Richard McVail, Chief Executive President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, the call will be open for questions. Questions will be limited to analysts and investors, And as a reminder, please limit yourself to one question with one follow-up. If we are unable to get to your question during the call, please call our Investor Relations Department at 770-384-2387. Before I turn the call over to Craig, let me remind you that today's press release and the presentations made by our executives include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in the release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today's presentation will also include certain non-GAAP measures Reconciliation of these measures is provided on our website. Now, let me turn the call over to Craig.

CRAIG MCBRIDE Thank you, Isabel, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on our call this morning. Fiscal 2021 is off to a strong start as we grew the business by over $9 billion compared to the first quarter of last year. Sales for the first quarter were $37.5 billion, up 32.7% from last year. Comp sales were up 31% from last year, and our U.S. stores had a positive comp of 29.9%. Diluted earnings per share were $3.86 in the first quarter, up from $2.08 in the first quarter last year. Our results this quarter were once again driven by broad-based strength across the business and geographies. All of our top 40 markets posted double-digit comps, while Canada posted comps above the company average, and Mexico posted double-digit comps. Both ticket and transactions were up double digits in the quarter, and as Ted will detail, we saw strong double-digit growth from both our pro and DIY customers. We continue to effectively manage the outsized demand for home improvement products seen throughout most of last year. despite disruptions in global supply chains that were further exasperated by poor congestion during the quarter. We leveraged the scale of our supply chain and partnered with our vendors to maintain our in-stock positions and prioritized key SKUs in high demand categories. While we continue to see strong level of engagement across our digital platforms, we saw more of our customers return to our stores. Sales leveraging our digital platforms increased approximately 27% versus the first quarter last year, and approximately 55% of online orders were fulfilled through a store. We continue to roll out new capabilities, such as Mixed Cart Selling from Store, that remove friction for both our customers and associates. The Mixed Cart feature enables associates to more efficiently and effectively serve the total project needs for a customer, as products from both the website and store can be added to a single transaction. We also continue to drive interconnected enhancements in other areas of the business to solve customer pain points. In tool rental, for example, we will soon expand our rent online pilot chain-wide. enabling RentOnline pickup in-store capabilities for all 1,300 plus tool rental locations in the U.S. and Canada. This will enhance the experience for our busy pro and DIY customers and complement additional investments we are making to expand our rental footprint and increase our assortment and delivery capabilities. We are focused on continuing to leverage the momentum of our strategic investments to further enhance the interconnected shopping experience. Our efforts will continue to support what we believe is our winning formula, deliver the best shopping experience and home improvement, extend our position as a low-cost provider with a relentless focus on productivity, and be the most efficient investor of capital in home improvement. We believe this strategy will help us deliver returns by driving growth faster than the market in any environment. The build-out of our One Home Depot supply chain vision is a wonderful example of our strategy in action. Enhanced fulfillment capabilities will not only create a better customer experience, but they will also expand the breadth of our current opportunity set from both a product and customer standpoint. The ability to combine this growth potential with scale to create the low-cost network and home improvement is a formula that we believe delivers long-term value creation for our customers, supplier partners, and shareholders. During the quarter, we continued to build out our one supply chain vision by opening several new facilities, and we are very excited with the progress we continue to make on this key strategic priority. We have now been operating in this unprecedented demand environment for over a year. and continue to align around a few key learnings. First, the investments we have made in the business over the past decade were the right ones. And second, they have enabled agility and flexibility to execute on critical business decisions in a challenging and dynamic operating environment. As a result, we have managed unprecedented levels of web traffic, record levels of product flow through our supply chain, all while improving customer service levels in our stores. These factors, coupled with our world-class associates and strong partnership with suppliers, have enabled us to meet outsized demand week after week. Our cultures remain our North Star, as our decisions are anchored to some of our most important values, do the right thing and take care of our people. Our ability to continue investing for the future while also managing the most fluid environment in our company's history, is a direct result of our associates and their extraordinary efforts. I want to close by thanking them for the many ways they continue to live our values by serving our customers, communities, and each other during these challenging times. With that, let me turn the call over to Ted.