Earnings Week Ahead: Retailers, Home Depot, and Walmart Report Results

The week of August 17 puts the US consumer on the stand. HD reports Tuesday, TGT and LOW follow Wednesday, and WMT closes the sequence Thursday. Consensus for Home Depot sits near $4.73 in earnings per share on roughly $47.2 billion of revenue, which would be about 4.2% revenue growth and 1% earnings growth, a spread that itself describes the margin pressure running through big-box retail.

The macro backdrop is what makes these prints matter beyond the individual tickers. Inflation remains solidly above 3%, so the question these results answer is whether households are absorbing higher prices or trading down. Walmart and Target read as a split test on that: Walmart has been gaining higher-income shoppers through the cycle, while Target skews more discretionary. Home Depot and Lowe's read the housing and renovation channel, which is rate-sensitive in a way the grocery channel is not.

Minutes from the July Federal Reserve meeting land the same week, alongside housing starts, building permits, industrial production, jobless claims, the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index, and preliminary August PMIs. Retail results and the minutes will be read against each other: soft consumer commentary plus dovish minutes is a different market than soft commentary plus a Fed still focused on above-target inflation.

What to watch is guidance and mix rather than the headline beat. Specifically: whether comparable sales growth is driven by traffic or by price, what management says about the back-to-school and early holiday order book, and whether Home Depot and Lowe's flag any change in big-ticket renovation demand.

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