Home Depot (NYSE: HD) just beat Wall Street on both earnings and revenue, delivering $4.92 in adjusted EPS and $47.9 billion in sales, while comparable sales rose 1.7% in Q2 2026 earnings – the company’s strongest growth since Q3 2022. Yet Chairman and CEO Ted Decker came off the same earnings call saying Home Depot still had not seen an inflection point in housing.
The numbers outside Home Depot have hardly offered a clean recovery story either, with Bloomberg reporting pending home sales sliding to their weakest level while CBS News continues to point to a housing shortage that has helped keep rental costs elevated.
So if housing turnover remains depressed and Home Depot itself still sees no inflection point…
How did the company just produce its best comparable-sales growth in nearly three years?
Let’s Look Past the Headline
Home Depot had 13 of its 16 merchandising departments post positive comparable sales in the quarter. That immediately complicates the idea that one category, one project type, or one temporary spending pocket dragged the company through.
Transactions above $1,000 increased 2.4%. Pro customer sales outperformed DIY. Online sales rose 11%. Those aren’t the figures of a broad housing recovery suddenly washing over the business. Home Depot’s management had already ruled that out.
And yet, the improvement was spread across enough of the company to produce its strongest comparable-sales growth in nearly three years.
Now, if housing hasn’t yet provided the recovery, and Home Depot’s growth is showing up across categories anyway, the next question isn’t whether the business is growing. It’s whose business that growth is coming from.
Management gave a fairly direct answer on the call: market share gains.
Home Depot Bought A Second Front Door Into The Pro Market
Management attributed part of the quarter’s growth to market-share gains. That becomes more interesting when you look at what Home Depot has spent the past few years building around the professional customer.
The biggest move was the $18.25 billion acquisition of SRS Distribution, a deal that pushed Home Depot beyond the traditional store model and deeper into roofing, landscaping and other specialist construction markets. SRS itself outperformed the company in the second quarter, posting positive comparable sales across all of its verticals as management said it was taking significant share.
What caught my attention, though, was what management said about the connection between SRS and the rest of the business. Home Depot stores can now access SRS’ full catalogue, allowing sales teams to keep larger orders inside the HD ecosystem rather than sending customers elsewhere. Within the past 12 months, 90% of Home Depot stores had already closed a sale through SRS.
Home Depot is also giving those customers far more places to do business with it. The company’s 2,364 retail stores now sit alongside more than 1,340 SRS locations, extending its reach into markets and product categories the traditional store network could not serve alone.
That broader network arrives at a particularly useful moment. The housing market may still be stuck, but Home Depot has spent $18 billion expanding the number of ways it can take share from competitors before housing eventually recovers.
The Stock Still Has A $360 Ceiling
The earnings report landed while Home Depot shares were still wrestling with the same price range they have been stuck in for weeks.
The stock climbed toward $360 in July, only to retreat. August brought another attempt, and that failed too. Each rejection sent shares back toward the low-$330s, where buyers have repeatedly stepped in.
That has created a fairly clear range on the chart: roughly $330 on the downside and $360 overhead.
HD closed the latest session at $337.49, almost directly on its rising 200-day moving average near $338. The stock is also trading below its 20-day and 50-day averages, both of which sit above the current price. That leaves the technical picture unresolved rather than broken.
HD didn’t need a housing recovery to beat expectations this quarter. If the company can keep taking share while the cycle remains weak, the market eventually has to decide whether $360 is still the right place to keep capping the stock.
Wall Street Thinks The Worst May Already Be Behind It
I wouldn’t call the housing market healthy because Home Depot posted one good quarter. The company’s own management has already told us it still hasn’t reached an inflection point, and the housing data outside the company gives us no reason to pretend otherwise.
But Wall Street is starting to position for what comes after that.
Jefferies reiterated its Buy rating and raised its price target to $398 from $360, arguing that easier comparisons, market-share gains and more normal storm activity could support the next leg of growth. DA Davidson also maintained its Buy rating, with a $377 price target.
I’m not buying Home Depot because most news outlets think the housing crisis has disappeared. But the fact that the company just produced its strongest comparable-sales growth since 2022 while the crisis is still here, is quite enticing.
If the housing market remains weak, Home Depot has already shown it can find growth elsewhere. If the market eventually turns, the company walks into that recovery with a much larger Pro ecosystem, more routes to market and evidence that it has already been taking share.
