Home Depot, Inc. (The)

Greetings and welcome to the Home Depot third quarter 2023 earnings conference 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 third quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining us on our call today are Ted Decker, Chair, President, and CEO, Anne Marie Campbell, Senior Executive Vice President, Billy Bastic, Executive Vice President of Merchandising, and Richard McVale, Executive Vice 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 Ted, 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 presentations will also include certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of these measures is provided on our website. Now, let me turn the call over to Ted.

Thank you, Isabel, and good morning, everyone. Sales for the third quarter were $37.7 billion, down 3% from the same period last year. Comp sales declined 3.1% from the same period last year, and our U.S. stores had negative comps of 3.5%. Diluted earnings per share were $3.81 in the third quarter compared to $4.24 in the third quarter last year. The third quarter was in line with our expectations. Similar to the second quarter, we saw continued customer engagement with smaller projects and experienced pressure in certain big ticket discretionary categories. In addition, lumber and copper and wire deflation and storm-related overlaps negatively impacted results in the quarter. Billy will discuss these and other business trends shortly. During the third quarter, our pro customer outperformed our DIY customer. While internal and external surveys suggest that pro backlogs are lower than they were a year ago, they are still healthy and elevated relative to historical norms. With only one quarter left in the year, we believe the endpoints for our previous guidance range are no longer likely outcomes. As a result, and as we announced in this morning's press release, we narrowed our guidance range for fiscal 2023. Richard will take you through the details in a moment. As we've discussed, this year reflects a period of moderation. However, we are confident in our ability to navigate through this unique environment. We remain very excited about our strategic initiatives and are committed to investing in the business to deliver the best interconnected shopping experience capture wallet share with the pro, and grow our store footprint. As we discussed at the investor conference in June, we continue to invest and focus on creating a frictionless, interconnected shopping experience for our customers. We are pleased with the progress we are making. HomeDepot.com is one of the largest retail websites in the United States, and our digital app is one of the most highly rated in all of retail. And yet, we believe there's still opportunity to reduce pain points across the shopping journey. Our teams are identifying areas of improvement, like better communication throughout the shopping journey, an easier returns process, and the ability to seamlessly and intuitively make changes to an order once placed. For our pros, we're investing in a multitude of initiatives. We remain focused on building out our unique ecosystem of products and services. As a result, we are evolving our organizational structure and recently elevated Ann Marie Campbell to Senior Executive Vice President, better aligning our outside sales and service business in the global stores organization. Pro is one of our biggest growth opportunities, and this organizational change will allow us to better serve them by leveraging our full ecosystem of expertise, product assortment, fulfillment, and operations. Our merchants, store and met teams, supplier partners, and supply chain teams did an outstanding job delivering value and service to our customers throughout the quarter. And I'd like to close by thanking them for their dedication and hard work. In addition, the Home Depot is proud to have tens of thousands of veterans, service members, and military spouses in orange aprons. Last week, we announced the Home Depot Foundation surpassed the goal of $500 million invested in veterans' causes and also increased the total commitment to $750 million by 2030. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Ann.