Home Depot Feeling The Pain

Well this isn't that much of a surprise but the world's largest home-improvement retailer is still feeling the pressure from the continued national housing slump. Today Home Depot announced that it would fire workers, close 15 stores and put on the "back burner" plans to build 50 more.
These plans would reduce investments by $1B over the next 3 years.

Home Depot has come under continued scrutiny for it's customer service in relation to it's rival and competitor Lowe's Company. Many believe that this is a real reason why they have lost 33% of it's market value within the last year. The retailer employs approximately 331,000 people of which two-thirds are full-time employees. The job cuts are Home Depot's third this year and come after they already announced in January that it would reduce staff at its Atlanta headquarters by 500 people (10%). Today's announcement will cut approximately 1,000 jobs mostly in its human resources department in hopes of shifting more people to the sales floor.

In February Home Depot announced that 4th quarter profit from 2007' fell by 27% and earnings forecasts were going to be reduced as the housing slump continues to take its toll on "solid" companies.

As we all know Columbia, Missouri has both a Home Depot and a Lowe's and for a town recovering from it's own housing issues it will be interesting to see if there are any problems with our two local stores. I honestly think our home-improvement retailers have fared far better than other stores as Columbia residents really do patronize our retailers especially the likes of Lowe's and Home Depot.

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