The simple version

Home Depot reported second-quarter results before the market opened this morning. Sales were $47.9 billion, an increase of $2.6 billion, or 5.7%, from a year earlier.

The number that led the coverage was neither of those. It was comparable sales, up 1.7%. That figure counts only locations that were already open a year ago, and the four-point gap between it and revenue growth is exactly why it exists.

The numbers

• Sales were $47.9 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2026, an increase of $2.6 billion, or 5.7%, from a year earlier (The Home Depot, second-quarter fiscal 2026 results, August 18, 2026)
• Comparable sales increased 1.7%, and comparable sales in the United States increased 1.3% (The Home Depot)
• Net earnings were $4.8 billion, or $4.79 per diluted share, compared with $4.6 billion, or $4.58 per diluted share, in the same period a year earlier (The Home Depot)
• Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $4.92. Adjusted is the company's own non-standard measure, which excludes amortization expense from acquired intangible assets and the related tax effects (The Home Depot)
• The company reaffirmed its fiscal 2026 guidance, which calls for total sales growth of approximately 2.5% to 4.5% and comparable sales growth of approximately flat to 2.0% (The Home Depot)
• The gap between 5.7% revenue growth and 1.7% comparable sales growth is 4.0 percentage points, and that gap is what comparable sales are built to exclude (arithmetic)
• Home Depot defines the measure in its quarterly filing rather than in the earnings release: comparable sales includes sales at locations, physical and online, open greater than 52 weeks, including remodels and relocations, and excludes closed stores (The Home Depot, Form 10-Q)
• Target and Lowe's report later this week, followed by Walmart (company earnings calendars)

What comparable sales exclude, and why it matters

Total revenue counts every dollar a retailer took in. That includes locations that opened last month, businesses acquired during the year, and anything the company did not have twelve months ago.

Comparable sales, often called same-store sales or comps, count only locations that were already open and operating a year earlier. The point is to answer a narrower and harder question. Are the stores that already existed selling more than they did before?

That distinction matters because the two can move in opposite directions. A chain opening locations quickly can post rising revenue while every individual store sells less than last year. Revenue would say the company is growing, and comps would say the growth is coming from having more locations rather than from any location doing better.

There is a caution the coverage rarely mentions. No law defines a comparable store, so each company sets its own rule and discloses it. Home Depot's threshold is 52 weeks, and it counts online sales alongside physical ones.

Worth noticing where that definition lives. It is not in the earnings release that reports the number; it sits in the quarterly filing, and the filing's glossary simply points the reader to another section. The figure that leads every headline is defined one document away from where it is announced.

The practical consequence is that comps are excellent for comparing a company to its own prior quarters and considerably weaker for comparing two different companies to each other. Two retailers reporting the same comp figure may be counting different things.

Reading the rest of the week

With Target, Lowe's, and Walmart all reporting in the next few days, the same reading applies to each. The headline will be revenue and earnings. The number that describes what households are actually doing is comps.

Two supporting details are worth finding in each report. The split between companywide and domestic comps, which for Home Depot was 1.7% against 1.3%, separates what happened in the United States from what happened elsewhere. The second is where the comp figure sits against the company's own guidance.

That second comparison is the one most coverage skips. Home Depot's own fiscal 2026 guidance calls for comparable sales growth of approximately flat to 2.0%, so a reading of 1.7% lands inside the range the company had already told investors to expect. A number can be higher than last year and still be exactly what was forecast.

The Real Cost lens on running a comp on yourself

The same adjustment that makes comparable sales useful makes household comparisons useful, and almost nobody applies it. Every figure below is a stated illustration.

• Comparing this year's grocery spending to last year's tells you little on its own, because the comparison mixes price changes, quantity changes, and any change in the household itself
• The retail version of the fix is to hold the store base constant. The household version is to hold the household constant, meaning the same number of people and the same broad categories
• A category that rose while the household did not change is a real increase, the same way a positive comp is a real increase at an unchanged store
• A total that rose because the household grew is the household equivalent of revenue growth from new stores, which is worth knowing and is not the same thing

The point is not that anyone should build a spreadsheet. It is that a year-over-year number is only informative once you know what changed underneath it, and that holds for a retailer with thousands of locations and for a kitchen table with two people.

What this means

When a retail earnings headline lands this week, find the comp number before reading anything else, then check it against revenue growth. If revenue is climbing much faster than comps, the growth is coming from expansion rather than from existing stores performing better.

The broader habit is to ask what a growth number is holding constant. Almost every impressive percentage in business and in personal finance depends on the base it is measured against, and the base is usually one line further down the page.

What this is NOT

This is not advice to buy, sell, or hold Home Depot, any retailer, or any security, and the companies named appear as dated factual examples rather than recommendations. This is not a judgment about whether any company's results were good, whether its stock is cheap or expensive, or whether the consumer is strong or weak. This is not a prediction of any company's results, its stock, or the economy. Adjusted earnings figures are labeled adjusted because they are the company's own non-standard measure rather than a figure computed under generally accepted accounting principles. Comparable sales definitions vary by company and are set by each company, so the figures here are not directly comparable across retailers. This is not investment or financial advice of any kind.

Sources

• The Home Depot, Inc., Announces Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Results; Reaffirms Fiscal 2026 Guidance, August 18, 2026 (sales, comparable sales, net earnings, adjusted diluted earnings per share, and guidance): https://ir.homedepot.com/news-releases/2026/08-18-2026-110040463
• The Home Depot, Inc., Form 10-Q (the company's stated comparable sales methodology, including the 52-week threshold and the treatment of closed stores and acquisitions): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/354950/000035495025000217/hd-20250803.htm
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR full-text search: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/
• U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Retail Trade: https://www.census.gov/retail/index.html