Home Depot Having Trouble Selling Wholesale Unit

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

According to The New York Post, Home Depot (HD) is having trouble selling its supply business, HD Supply. The slowdown in the housing market is hurting the company’s efforts to get the $10 billion that they hope the unit will fetch. And, the demand for the firm is compounded by the fact that it is a mish mash of smaller supply companies that were glued together by Home Depot over time. "It’s a hairball," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Colin McGranahan, "a roll up of a roll up." 

Home Depot is already struggling with its retail business. Same-store sales dropped 7.6% in the latest quarter.

The performance of HD Supply in the last quarter raises an interesting question. Both sales and net income were up at the unit. Much of the increase came from businesses that the company acquired, but the operation may still be the bright spot in the company’s dark days.

Maybe the company should not sell HD Supply at all.

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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