Lowe's Q2 2026 earnings: profit tops estimates, sales fall short as DIY spending stays soft
Lowe's beat profit expectations but fell short on revenue, and cut its full-year sales outlook as everyday DIY shoppers keep pulling back.
| Q2 2026 | Reported | Expected | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | $4.40 | $4.29 | +2.6% |
| Revenue | $25.96B | $26.51B | -2.1% |
Key takeaways
- Adjusted earnings per share of $4.40 came in ahead of Wall Street’s forecast, but total sales of about $26.0 billion fell short of what analysts had expected, even though sales were up from a year earlier. About 11 cents of the per-share profit came from a one-time refund of tariffs the company had paid, so underlying results were a bit less rosy than the headline number suggests.
- Comparable sales (sales at stores and online open at least a year, a core measure of underlying demand) rose just 0.2%, as professional contractors kept spending steadily while do-it-yourself shoppers stayed cautious about bigger home projects.
- Online sales jumped 15.7% from a year ago, which the company credited partly to Mylow, its AI-powered shopping assistant that helps customers find products and plan projects — Lowe’s said shoppers who use the tool convert to buyers at three times the rate of those who don’t.
- Lowe’s trimmed its outlook for the rest of the fiscal year: it now expects full-year comparable sales to be roughly flat, down from its earlier forecast of flat to up 2%, and narrowed its total sales target to about $92 billion from a prior range of $92 billion to $94 billion.
- The company’s gross margin — the share of each sales dollar left after the cost of goods — has held around 33% over the past year, while its operating margin (profit after running the business, before interest and taxes) sits near 11.6%, roughly matching the operating-margin guidance management reiterated for the full year.
- Profit per share has actually declined slightly over the trailing year even as revenue grew, a gap management linked to soft DIY demand and cautious consumer spending on larger, discretionary home-improvement projects.
- Management pointed to tariff-related cost pressure and a still-cautious consumer as the main headwinds, while framing Pro customer growth, home-services sales, and AI-driven online tools as the areas offsetting that weakness.
Q2 2026 in context
| Metric | Jul 2026 | Aug 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $26.0B | $24.0B | +8.3% |
| Net income | $2.4B | $2.4B | +0.0% |
| Free cash flow | $3.1B | $3.7B | -16.6% |
| Diluted EPS | $4.27 | $4.27 | 0.0% |
| Gross margin | 33.0% | 33.8% | -0.8 pts |
| Operating margin | 13.7% | 14.5% | -0.8 pts |
| Net margin | 9.2% | 10.0% | -0.8 pts |
Figures for the quarter ended Jul 2026 and the quarter ended Aug 2025, as reported to the SEC.
How the stock took it
Lowe's Companies Inc closed at $215.64 on Aug 18, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $217.34 on Aug 20, 2026, the first session after it — +0.8% across the report.
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Fundamentals
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 33.3% | Trailing 12 months |
| Operating margin | 11.6% | Trailing 12 months |
| Net profit margin | 7.5% | Trailing 12 months |
| Pretax margin | 9.9% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS | $11.86 | Trailing 12 months |
| Revenue growth (YoY) | 6.2% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS growth (YoY) | -1.9% | Trailing 12 months |
| Return on equity | 264.5% | Trailing 12 months |
Sources: company report · earnings call