New Housing Starts figures for April came in much lower than anticipated, posting -2.6% in new starts, as opposed to the +3.7% expected. A seasonally adjusted annualized 1.17 million new homes were started last month, lower than the 1.26 million expected. Building Permits also underperformed expectations at -2.5% from an expected +0.8%.
These reads have been relatively volatile for most of 2017 so far — a warm February saw a rise in starts and permits earlier in the year, but by March the numbers had gotten a lot softer. April was projected to show a big bounce back, but we’re not seeing it. By region, the Northeast was down 37% year over year, the worst-performing region in April.
There’s nothing tragic in these numbers, but analysts were looking for better. Perhaps we’ll see further revisions as Q2 progresses and the volatile month-over-month reads will continue.
Retail Earnings, Cont.
Home Depot (HD – Free Report) topped earnings and sales expectations in its fiscal Q1 2018 report released before the opening bell this morning. The home improvement retailer brought in $1.67 per share versus the $1.61 expected in the Zacks consensus estimate. Revenues of $23.89 billion for the quarter beat the $23.74 our analysts had been looking for. Global comps were +5.5%, and 6.0% in the U.S. — both figures are better than expected.
Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS – Free Report) disappointed investors this morning, missing earnings expectations by 2 cents to 52 cents per share on sales that came in exactly as projected by the Zacks consensus at $1.83 billion. But full-year guidance having been ratcheted down below consensus is where the stock is really taking a hit in the pre-market, now down a whopping 12%. Same-store sales also fell short at 2.4% compared to the 3.5% in the Zacks consensus. This is the first quarterly miss for the sports retailer in at least a year.
TJX Companies (TJX – Free Report) shares have also fallen 5% ahead of today’s opening bell even though the company’s 82 cents per share topped the 79 cents anticipated, although quarterly sales of $7.78 billion missed the $7.91 billion we had been expecting. Also, yearly comps came in at 1.0% rather than the 1.6% analysts had projected. TJX typically beats estimates on the bottom line, but we were looking for a stronger quarter from the company this time around.
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