Dallas, Texas 10/23/2013 (Financialstrend) – The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) has been at the receiving end of bad press thanks to unfavourable research papers coming from rating agencies. It is not going through this phase alone. It has its peer and competitor Lowe facing similar headwinds.
In the latest research report released on October 18, Cleveland Research had painted negative prospects for this $107 billion market capitalized home improvement store retail chain. Reports from Cleveland attract lot of attention from old time trade analyst since the rating agency employs data collected from elaborate checks with channel partners and survey on store traffic and over all sales.
A similar report had come in on October 16. This was released by Stanley Black & Decker who had forecasted tough times ahead for both Home Depot and Lowe’s. These recommendations from Stanley were based on results from NAHB Housing Market Index. The index performance was below market expectations leading to a down ward sentiment shifting to the Home Depot stock.
Buffeted by these head winds, the stock has struggled to manage a positive outlook over the past few weeks. Last week the stock had lost 0.43% of its market value. In the last 30 days it had shed 1.38% of its value primarily driven down by the downcast sentiments of the overall speciality retail sector.
These negative sentiments about the stock in the market are not mirrored in the financial and operational results of Home Depot. In the past 12 months, it has posted a net income of $4.99 billion from sales of $78 billion. It has paid out cumulative $1.56 dividend per share over the past 12 months. This translates to a little over 2% dividend yield annually. Long term investors who had bought into the stock 12 months back have seen their market value go up by 22%.
