Home Depot: Strong Buy Rating Initiated with $330B Target Amid Strategic Inflection

We initiate on HD with a Strong Buy rating and $330,025,000,000 price target. Home Depot operates

the largest home improvement retail platform in the US, serving both professional and DIY customers across 2,317 stores and a powerful digital ecosystem. Behind the facade of steady-as-she-goes, mature-retail, HD sits at a tactical inflection point where embedded brand equity, operating rigueur, and supply chain investments unfold into meaningful earnings leverage as the cycle turns. As near-term consensus turns their focus to benign margin pressure, and guided FY25E EPS decline to $14.60 (-2.1% y/y), we find conviction in management's willingness to underwrite near-term caution for the sake of long-term positioning. In our view, consensus overlooks mix drags and minimal buybacks, and the ballast recovery to $15.35 FY26E EPS (+5.1%) — not heroic, but measured — but the Street's current 23.7x P/E still doesn't reflect longer-term normalization. What others view as mature retailer, we see as an ecosystem with unparalleled pricing power and service irritability, now poised to be leveraged as op-margin steadily accumulates, underwritten by a blended recovery to 13.3% Operating Margin, which we deliberately set below Street's bullish thesis. Our 21.5x forward multiple circumspectly sits between HD's 5-year median (22.56x) and current peer group averages, leaving upside that is both sizable and contained. Macro volatility and pro demand lag remain on our radar; however, balance-sheet discipline and embedded margin recovery path remain the fulcrum. In our view, Street is overly focused on transitory challenges and overlooks the scale — and timeliness