Home Depot To Expand (NYSE: HD)

Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD ) company shares stood at 35.27 as of 4/21/2010 signifying a +0.09 – +0.26% change over the previous trading day. Volume for the day finished at 19600000.

Home Depot, Inc. , a company in the Home Improvement Stores (Consumer Services) industry, has had a number of headlines of late, which has led to a 22.5% movement in its stock price over the last 3 months.

Home Depot is an interesting stock for those looking for a solid future investment. It lies in the Dow 30 – which is widely considered the most presitgious index in the world. It stands as the largest home-improvement retailer in the US – an area that was heavily hit amidst the financial and housing crisis of the past years. In fact, Home Depot has had to eliminate employees in each of the past 3 years. But for the first time in 4 years, CEO Frank Blake has announced that is adding store jobs in expectation of economic recovery and an increase in consumer spending. The decision for the growth (which stood at 317,000 at the beginning of the year) was taken late last year after sales had made signs of recovery..

Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD ) Basic Analysis

For today’s basic analysis, we start with the P/E. HD ‘s current P/E stands at 22.6 – worse than the average across the industry of 22.1. Analysts believe that HD ‘s forward P/E is around 16.25, so that’s a plus compared to the trailing P/E.

Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD ) Analyst View

The analyst consensus for HD is a Moderate Buy, with a current 1.93 mean recommendation (with 1 being a strong buy, and 5 being a strong sell). The consensus score 3 months ago was 2.17. Zacks, the investment research firm, gives Home Depot, Inc. a 2 out of 6 rank in the industry.

Also worth sharing is the shares’ grades from MSN Money in the following areas:

Technical Grade: A
Valuation Grade:C
Fundemental Grade:A
Return Grade:A
Risk Grade: A

Finally, no matter whether you decide to sell, hold or buy Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD ) shares, make sure you do it at the right price. Timing the market or technical analysis is often a hard task, but do take into account the historical price data:

We’ll be keeping a close eye on the HD (NYSE:HD ) stock price for developments over the next couple of weeks.”