What's going on?

Walmart and Home Depot are a scrappy pair of US retail titans: they reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter results on Tuesday.

What does this mean?

Analysts had been expecting Walmart�s sales in existing US stores to have risen 5.4% last quarter compared to the same time last year. But the company revealed sales were actually up 9.3%, helped by almost twice as much ecommerce revenue as home deliveries became “the new normal�. That meant Walmart�s revenue and profit � up 80% on a year ago � was higher than predicted. And that, it said, was thanks to a spending boost from the government�s stimulus checks.


Home improvement retailer Home Depot might�ve appreciated them too, revealing much better-than-expected revenue and profit. Sales in its existing stores were 23% higher than the same time last year � more than double the growth analysts had predicted. And it looks like all that time indoors gave homeowners expensive ideas: the average price of products they bought was up 10% from a year ago.

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: Stand and deliver.

Walmart�s ramped up its same-day delivery options lately, but if food delivery services Instacart and Deliveroo have taught us anything, it�s that the move will probably lose the retailer money in the near term. That might be why it�s restarted plans to sell its UK grocery chain, Asda, in an effort to free up some extra cash.

Zooming in: Home is where the money is.

Home Depot doesn�t lend itself to ecommerce like Walmart does: its customers, after all, are generally looking for particular things they need straight away. So investors tend to look at housing data in the US � where Home Depot makes 90% of its sales � for a sense of where the company�s earnings are headed next. And Tuesday�s fresh data was encouraging: homebuilding activity and building permits were higher last month than economists predicted, suggesting future demand for Home Depot�s products might be higher than investors think too.