Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. It's my pleasure to introduce the management for Lowe's. Today we have with us Marvin Ellison, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Marvin was appointed in his current role in 2018 and has more than 30 years of leadership and operational experience in the retail and home improvement industry. I am going to turn the podium over to Marvin for some prepared comments. We're doing this one a little bit differently, as my questions are going to be non-deal-related topics. And with that, I will turn it over to Marvin.
Great. Hey, good afternoon. Thank you, Kate. So I look forward to speaking with Kate here in a moment about our quarterly earnings results and the trends that's impacting our industry. But before we begin the Q&A, I'd like to take a few minutes to provide some context to the recent announcement we made last month on the acquisition of Foundation Building Materials, or FBM. So FBM is a leading distributor of interior building products specializing in drywall, metal framing, ceiling systems, insulation, and commercial doors and hardware. FBM serves a diverse, large Pro customer base with approximately 45% residential mix, which spans single-family and multi-family construction, and 55% commercial mix, which is split fairly evenly between new construction and repair and remodel applications.
We've been engaged with FBM's leadership team since the beginning of the year, and we've been consistently impressed by their deep industry expertise and their track record for profitable growth. Founder and CEO Ruben Mendoza leads a very talented leadership team with over 200 combined years of industry experience and with an average tenure of over a decade with FBM. Their national footprint of over 370 branches complements Lowe's store base, especially in urban areas of California, the Northeast, and the Midwest, where we have less of a physical store presence. FBM also has a strong track record of both organic and inorganic growth, as they've successfully integrated more than 60 acquisitions onto a single ERP system, oftentimes within 60-90 days. This single ERP made FBM a more attractive acquisition target versus their industry peers.
Having a single ERP also makes FBM more than just a collection of roll-ups, which you traditionally see in this space. And post-closing, we'll bring FBM and ADG under the same umbrella to create a differentiated offering to serve the large Pro within this $250 billion total addressable market. This unlocks new opportunity for Lowe's, as we don't serve this customer segment in a meaningful way today. And FBM also brings capabilities that Lowe's doesn't have, things like a fleet of over 1,200 boom trucks, 1,100 trailers, 900 flatbed trucks, and over 400 tractors. These assets provide us with advanced capabilities for job site fulfillment and also the ability to serve large, complex orders. We'll also gain access to digital tools like the MyFBM app, which offers real-time pricing, ordering, and delivery tracking for these complex orders in both English and Spanish.
FBM also gives us something that we desire, and that is a strong trade credit program, which is often key to serving the large Pro customer orders. We're also excited about the cross-selling opportunities for this combined organization. Lowe's customers will gain access to FBM's core assortment and fulfillment capabilities through our new Pro Extended Aisle system available at the Pro desks in our stores, and FBM's customers will benefit from access to Lowe's complementary products like tools, safety, equipment, fasteners that drive greater attachment. With an estimated 18 million new homes needed by 2033, we also see a unique opportunity for both FBM and ADG to work together to develop a comprehensive interior solutions platform for home builders, providing them with everything from drywall to ceiling systems to insulation to doors, as well as flooring, cabinets, and countertops.
Overall, these two acquisitions accelerate the evolution of our Total Home Strategy and strengthen our ability to serve the Pro customer, small, medium, and large. We believe this will enhance our scale, expand our capabilities, and support faster, more sustainable top-line growth while also delivering long-term shareholder value. So thank you for your time. And Kate, I now look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you. So thanks so much for joining us today.
Yes, ma'am.
I think there's a lot of conversation happening about what exactly is going on in home improvement today. I think we've seen better results out of both you and your competitor in the second quarter than was expected, and I think everyone's trying to figure out what do we attribute that to and how sustainable is it.
I think for us, we've been focused for seven years on what we call retail fundamentals, and that's a very basic way of outlining key things that we believe every retailer must do well to have sustainable growth, and quite candidly, seven years ago, we were not doing any of them very well. We had a great balance sheet, wonderful, energetic front-line employees that we call associates, but we had a strategy that was not designed for a modern retailer in an omnichannel world where brick and mortar and digital has to connect. So we made a lot of investments, and we believe what we saw in the second quarter is a combination of a couple of things. Number one, as you saw throughout the quarter, our comps improved from negative comps in May to positive comps in June to a 4.7% positive comp in the month of July.
So we had a really strong exit rate coming out of the second quarter. That was attributed to, in some cases, a seasonal shift from earlier in the quarter to late in the quarter to much-improved seasonal weather. But also, we had category performance across areas like paint and flooring and strength and appliances and seasonal categories. So it was a combination of a lot of things coming together, including seasonal shifts and weather, but also core categories performing well. So we're cautiously optimistic that the consumer, specifically our homeowner consumer, is a healthy consumer and that they're willing to spend, especially when they can get a value. But we're also cautiously optimistic that hopefully we're going to see some trends beginning to shift in a more sustainable way, but it's just too early to call that.
I think you probably heard pretty consistently today that the back half of this year will be more focused on managing tariff-cost-related challenges that we're all going to face. We're preparing for that. We're tracking it daily. We're very aware of the elasticity of our consumer and of our product categories. But we have to wait and see how the back half consumer responds to this tariff environment before we can have a definitive point of view that we've hit an inflection point or there's light at the end of the tunnel, whatever analogy you'd like to use. But we feel great about our business. And overall, we feel great about the health of the consumer, which happens to be a homeowner that really serves us on a day-to-day basis.
You've talked about mortgage rates of five and a half to six and a half likely being the sweet spot of when maybe housing turnover could start to improve. Do you still view this as the right level?
Kate, it's a difficult question to answer. What we believe is that if we can get to a sub-6% mortgage rate, we think psychologically that may be a bit of an unlock for a lot of our consumers. I mean, today, roughly 90% of our customers either have their houses paid for or they have a mortgage rate of less than 4%. So these customers are in what we call a lock-in effect, where they've generated a lot of equity. I think the data tells us we have roughly $33 trillion in equity available in the current marketplace. So we're at almost record equity. Our consumer has low unemployment, wage growth, but they still have a bit of concern about the macro, and the mortgage rate environment is forcing them to just stay put to wait it out, and the question that you're asking is the right question.
That is, what level of mortgage rate will unlock this lock-in? And we believe that it's probably sub-6%, but we just have to wait and see. Now, the good news is, even if the consumer remains locked in and they're unwilling to venture out into this higher mortgage rate environment, at some point, they're going to have to make a decision on their existing home. And what our Pro customers tell us in the surveys that we provide on a quarterly basis is that customers are not canceling projects. They're postponing them. They're just waiting to see if the mortgage rate environment improves. They're waiting to see if there's going to be another economic shoe to fall, so to speak, in the marketplace.
But at some point, they're going to have to make a decision on what they do with the existing home, whether they remodel the kitchen, whether they do a room expansion, whether they add a garage. And so we are perfectly positioned for either scenario. If the mortgage rate environment opens up and customers decide to go out, our acquisition of ADG and FBM puts us in a position where we can take advantage of that $250 billion total addressable market. If they decide to stay put in their existing homes and just invest in an upgrade or an enhancement, then we're perfectly positioned with the investments we made the last five years to take advantage of that as well.
If we can just move on to tariffs and pricing. You've noted that you're taking a portfolio approach to price. Can you maybe talk a little bit about how you've managed through this environment, what you've had to do on the assortment side, how well you've mitigated the additional costs, and what the consumer can expect to see?
Yeah. Really, for us, it's three things. It's about our global sourcing footprint. It's about our negotiation with our suppliers and about, to your point, how do we balance out our assortment. And so let me just take a step back and kind of level set on where we are from a global sourcing perspective. So today, roughly 60%, six-zero, of our goods are sourced from the U.S. Roughly 20% are sourced from China, 10% from Mexico, and then the remaining 10% in areas of Southeast Asia, India, and Canada, and around the globe. And these percents represent direct and indirect. In other words, they represent private brands where we are the direct sourcer of the product of record, and also indirect where they have national supplier that may be manufacturing sourcing product around the globe. These percents are dramatically different than they were seven years ago when I arrived.
We have a much greater percent of products being sourced in the U.S. and a lower percent in areas of China. So we've been working really hard to just continue to lessen our dependency on one country of origin, and we made a lot of progress in that regard, working with our suppliers to find just the right locations for us to just have minimal risk relative to being oversaturated in one area. And so along with that, we've been working with our suppliers to share in the cost increases that the tariff environment has brought to bear. And we've had really good partnerships and understanding that we have to try to find win-win scenarios for each. And now we've had to just take a look at our portfolio and making sure that we understand the price elasticity of our consumers.
As you know, pricing in retail is dramatically different than it was even five years ago. Today, it's highly sophisticated with built-in algorithms designed on internal financial targets, competitive scraping, and also the understanding of price elasticity around all your merchandising categories and also the customer segments that you're serving. So when you factor all these things together, you create a dynamic environment where, in some cases, prices go up. In some cases, prices go down. It's a very dynamic portfolio. The one thing that we've been committed to is offering the customer value because we think in this environment, customers still respond to a value, and that's been proven throughout the year, but also to remain competitive.
I mean, we're not going to put ourselves in a position where we're going to lose market share in this environment because we're going to be priced inappropriately relative to the competition or inappropriately relative to consumer demand. And as you can appreciate, we're literally tracking this on a daily basis. We're tracking units, and we're tracking overall performance geographically by customer segment. And it's something that we're going to continue to manage. We've created really strong systems and analytics that gives us the ability to be agile and dynamic so we're not locked into a specific point of view as much as we are locked into trying to serve the customers as best we can.
If we can maybe switch over to the balance sheet and capital allocation, I think it's a question that we are getting a little bit more often is if you are shifting your capital allocation strategy.
I would say it's not necessarily a shift as much as it is an ongoing transformation relative to the needs of the customer and how we believe we can deliver shareholder value. What we've always said is we're going to invest in the business. We're going to offer and continue to increase our dividend, and we're going to have a share repurchase strategy. And so the investments we've made in the last two acquisitions, in our view, are directly tied to continued investments in the business. And we think that that's going to benefit our shareholders long-term. And I'll give you thoughts on that in a second. We're going to continue to raise our dividend on an annual basis, which we're committed to.
We're going to re-enter the share repurchase arena once we're able to continue to pay down debt and get back to our leverage ratio of 2.75 times, which we're committed to. As we ask the question, how do we create more value for our shareholders? Do we continue to buy back shares at the rate that we've been buying back shares for the last five years, or do we look at ways to more aggressively invest in the business? We believe strongly that the investments that we're making in ADG and FBM, the two most recent acquisitions, will provide greater shareholder return because it gives us the ability to have more consistent and sustainable growth. We did a very simple analysis. We asked the question, when the housing market recovers, what segments of our business will benefit from that recovery?
I'll just remind you of the data point I shared that you're going to have 18 million new homes needed by 2033. The one thing that we quickly determined is that we could identify growth segments throughout our business in areas that we've made investments over the last five years. But the one area that was an incredible void was single-family home construction and multifamily. Because when you have this 18 million home deficit that has to be addressed in this country, it's going to come from single-family and multifamily construction. We had no meaningful strategy to gain any financial benefit from that. In other words, our concern was you're going to have this inflection that's going to happen in housing, and we're going to be on the outside looking in.
The question was, how do we create a strategy and create a segment of our business that will give us the ability to benefit from this recovery that we believe is going to happen just based on supply and demand? The acquisition of ADG and FBM does that. Because we're going to design an interior solutions platform where we can go into a large homebuilder. Think about the large builders out there that we currently do business with: ADG, PulteGroup, Lennar, D.R. Horton as examples. We'll be able to have a broad portfolio of things that we can offer under one umbrella: flooring, cabinets, and countertops, insulation, ceiling systems, door hardware, appliances. That can all happen under one umbrella, which takes a lot of complexity away from the project for the homebuilder.
And it also gives us the ability to leverage internal capabilities and capabilities of ADG and FBM while making us now a significant player in a $250 billion total addressable market. So it's not a change as much as it is a ratio in how we're spending relative to investing in the business and pausing share repurchases for a period of time, which we have every intention once we get to our leverage ratio to enter back into the share repurchase arena.
That's helpful. Thank you. I wanted to make sure we asked about marketplace because that is something new to the business model. And I think you're approaching it a little bit differently. It sounds very exciting in terms of the product expansion that we can see as a result of it. So could you maybe walk us through where you are in the process of developing this new muscle, if you will, and what you think it will do for the overall Lowe's enterprise?
Yes. Okay. One of the things that we did, we did a real simple analysis. We looked around the globe and asked a question. If you look at brick-and-mortar retailers that have had the most robust growth in e-commerce, what are some traits that we need to identify? And the one common trait we found was the existence of a product marketplace. And so for us, we made the decision really to be the first to start the first product marketplace for home improvement in the U.S. And it started with, number one, identifying the talent required to do this from individuals that have had history and experience doing this in other places. So we recruited a very talented team. Then we had to put the system in place. And so this Mirakl operating system is a system widely regarded as a universal system across the marketplace environment.
And the reason why that's important is because if you're a successful seller in a marketplace, you just want a plug-and-play process where you have a system that you're already accustomed to using. And the ability for us to partner with Mirakl and to get this system up and going quickly was important. As a matter of fact, they awarded us recently a recognition of having the fastest launch on their platform of any customer that they've ever done business with. And that's just indicative of the level of talent we brought to this team. So our objective is to have what we call a closed marketplace. So it's not open to any seller who wants to come in. We want to make sure that we protect our brand, and we have a very thoughtful approach to how we're approaching this.
Having said that, we're really excited about the early results that we're seeing. We're really excited about the percent of new customers that we're seeing shopping online that never shopped us before because we have a broader assortment of products based on what the early stages of the marketplace has brought us, and again, I would say, okay, we're in the really early innings. I'd say probably in inning number one or two in a nine-inning contest, but we have bold aspirations. We have people who've been there done it before, and we're really excited about what we're seeing, and the early results are exceeding expectations across the board, and we're going to continue to build.
Because you're only maybe in inning one or two, it might be too early to ask about this, but the plans for integrating the marketplace with the Lowe's physical stores and using those existing fulfillment capabilities, when does that come along?
Yeah. It's something that is on the roadmap. It's something that is under consideration. And the great thing for us is there are so many great benchmarks around the globe that we can look to and learn. There are also some cautionary tales that we can look to and learn from. And so we're taking a very deliberate approach, but we have a robust project outline. We have an aggressive timeline. And we think all those things will come to bear within the right timeframe as we continue to learn and ensure that we're doing what's most important is giving our customers what they want and making sure that we're keeping our customers first in how we approach this. But again, we're very excited.
Great. We've been asking the same five questions to each company that has sat down with us today. So we're at that part of the conversation. Some of this we've already talked a little bit about. But if we start first with the health of the consumer, more just overall, your expectations for what the health of the consumer would look like in the back half of 2025 versus what you saw in the first half, do you think things will be the same, better, or worse?
Okay. We think things are going to be the same. We don't see any material change in consumer behavior, nor are we anticipating any dramatic macro changes. The only caveat to that is, as we mentioned, we're going to probably see more tariff-related price increases across the macro. We're paying really close attention to that, but minus that, we think we're going to see a stable environment, and we think it's going to be consistent with the first half.
When it comes to pricing, and again, we talked a little bit about this when we were discussing tariffs, but are there any pricing actions you've taken so far, and what has been the elasticity response?
Okay. Nothing meaningful. The first half did not drive any what I would call tariff-related pricing adjustments to any material effect. As we think about the back half, we're going to leverage our portfolio. We've been very transparent from the very beginning. We said that we're going to be price competitive, understanding, as I say often, math is universal, and so the math is the math, but we're also in a position where we have to serve our customers. We have to offer our customers a value, and we have to ensure that we are a place where customers believe they can not only get quality innovation, but they can get a competitive price, and so we're going to offer that. We will have a much better point of view on the pricing environment at the end of this quarter because we think that we'll learn a lot now.
I've said it consistently that this environment was going to become clearer for all of us post-Labor Day. So we're kind of at the beginning of that period. We're paying really close attention. Like every major retailer, we're literally tracking this on a daily basis, understanding how the customer's responding to any changes we make. The reality is we're going to have prices that will be very dynamic. We're going to have certain categories where we're going to be priced competitively that prices may go down. We're going to stay in our same promotional cadence that we've always been in, and we just exited Labor Day. If you looked at our Labor Day promotional cadence, it's very consistent with last year.
And so there are certain parts of the business that we're going to be very consistent because we think that's important to the consumer. But again, we're going to monitor the marketplace. We're going to be very, very conscious of our consumer. And I'll have a much better opinion on what the dynamics will look like as we get through this quarter.
Okay. Our third question is around inventory. Can you talk about your expectations for inventory growth in the back half? And have you or do you expect to see any disruption in shipments due to the global supply chain?
Yeah. We see nothing that gives us concern about disruption in the supply chain. Most of our second-half buys are already completed and landed in the U.S., with the exception of maybe some holiday, but it's well on the way. So we feel great about the commitments that we've made from an inventory perspective. Even if you go to spring of 2026, most of those decisions are already locked in. And so we have a pretty good point of view on that as well. Our inventory environment will fluctuate based on consumer demand. If demand goes up, then we will obviously invest in inventory to meet demand. I'm pleased to say that our in-stock position today for both Pro and DIY is as good as it's been in my seven years with the company.
A lot of credit goes to the merchants, goes to our supply chain team, and our operations team for a lot of hard work, so we feel really good about our inventory position, and we don't see anything that gives us any concerns about disruptions in the back half of the year.
Our fourth question is around non-tariff margin drivers. So freight, wages, and materials. What is your view if those costs will be better, same, or worse into 2026?
We'll start with the back half of this year. We don't see anything that gives us any concern relative to any expense-related increases. I mean, we've been incredibly disciplined as a company. I'd argue that we're one of the best operating retailers in the world relative to driving productivity, to ensuring that we are making the right technology investments, at the same time delivering great service to our customers. One thing that I'll always say about retail, when you know a retailer is making the right cost-related decisions, is if you continue to see costs going down and customer service going up. Anyone can drive costs down at the deficit of customer service. But if you can improve your customer service environment at the same time you're driving costs down, then to me, that's the right equation. And that's exactly what you see in our business.
As a matter of fact, we came out of the second quarter with customer service improvements across the board, large part driven by a really, really effective companion app that we delivered and developed with OpenAI for our associates in the store to improve their product knowledge and give them information about multiple departments they may not even work in. We feel good about the early trends we're seeing. As you think about 2026, it's a little early, and what we typically do is when we have our fourth-quarter earnings call, we give a more perspective. I can tell you, as it relates to the back half of this year, we don't see anything that gives us concern or pause relative to the expense environment or any operating costs that we think will put pressure on margin, and we are very committed to our Perpetual Productivity Improvement initiatives.
We call it PPI. And we got a $1 billion target that we laid out for this year, and we're on track to deliver that.
Thank you. And then our last question, just in the last couple of minutes here. This doesn't apply necessarily that much to the home improvement industry, but we have seen more in the way of consolidation and store closures and bankruptcies, I think, in the last year than we have in the last few years. Do you think market share consolidation will speed up, slow down, or be the same in 2026?
It's a good question. What I will say is when you think about home improvement, I want to remind everyone we have a $1 trillion total addressable market as we see it. And it's split evenly between DIY and Pro. And so if you think about the consolidation that's happening, it's typically happening on that Pro side and primarily on the distribution side. And even with what we've seen the last couple of months, last 12 months, we still see a very fragmented Pro marketplace. And that $500 billion in total addressable market, a lot of it is still up for grabs. So even though we think there will be additional consolidation, we don't see anything that's going to be accelerated or something that's going to be out of the norm.
Obviously, we're going to pay close attention to it, but we think this $500 billion total addressable market for Pro is going to remain relatively fragmented. It's going to remain populated with regional players and geographic players that we think will exist for the foreseeable future, and we'll be opportunistic to make sure we're making the right organic and inorganic investments while continuing, again, to get back to our leverage target, which is very important to us, but we think we can do both and that we can continue to create sustainable growth that we think will benefit our shareholders.
Thank you for joining us today.
Great.
Thank you.
It's always good to be here.