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Housing

Lowe’s (LOW): Hope Gets In Your Eyes

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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One word from a CEO can obscure an entire earnings reports. Home improvement giant Lowe’s (NYSE:LOW) reported lackluster earnings. However, its chief Robert A. Niblock said, “We are beginning to see signs of improved performance in some of the hardest-hit housing markets including California, Florida and areas of the desert Southwest.” Those areas were crushed so flat that it would require a massive turnaround the regions to do much to help the prospects of Lowe’s or Home Depot (NYSE:HD)

Lowe’s numbers were net earnings of $344 million for the quarter ended October 30, 2009, a 29.5% decline from the same period a year ago. Diluted earnings per share declined 30.3% to $0.23 from $0.33. Revenue fell 3% to $11.4 billion.

The most telling part of the Lowe’s earnings release is that sales in the current quarter will be flat with last year. The final period of 2008 was particularly poor for the housing market, so that there will be no improvement tells much more about Lowe’s prospects that the CEO statement does. Lowe’s aid expects comparable store sales to decline 2% to 6% so it will have to rely on firm pricing when the housing market is still in a severe recession.

The market, of course, listened to the CEO. Lowe’s shares moved up slightly to $22, just below that stock’s 52-week high of $24.09.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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