Home Depot Value Stock - Dividend - Research Selection

The Home Depot, Inc. is the world’s largest home improvement retailer based on Net Sales for the fiscal year ended January 29, 2017 ("fiscal 2016"). The Home Depot sells a wide assortment of building materials, home improvement products and lawn and garden products and provides a number of services. The Home Depot stores average approximately 104,000 square feet of enclosed space, with approximately 24,000 additional square feet of outside garden area. As of the end of fiscal 2016, we had 2,278 The Home Depot stores located throughout the United States, including the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the territories of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, Canada and Mexico. When we refer to "The Home Depot", the "Company", "we", "us" or "our" in this report, we are referring to The Home Depot, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

The Home Depot, Inc. is a Delaware corporation that was incorporated in 1978. Our Store Support Center (corporate office) is located at 2455 Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta, Georgia 30339. Our telephone number is (770) 433-8211.

Our internet website is www.homedepot.com. We make available on the Investor Relations section of our website, free of charge, our Annual Reports to shareholders, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, Proxy Statements and Forms 3, 4 and 5, and amendments to those reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after filing such documents with, or furnishing such documents to, the SEC.

We include our website addresses throughout this filing for reference only. The information contained on our websites is not incorporated by reference into this report.

Operating Strategy

Our strategic framework is founded on our three-legged stool of customer experience, product authority, and productivity and efficiency driven by effective capital allocation, all united by the goal of providing an interconnected retail experience to drive value for our customers, our associates, our suppliers and our shareholders. The retail landscape is rapidly evolving, and our goal is to become more agile in responding to the changing competitive landscape and customer preferences. As customers increasingly expect to be able to buy how, when and where they want, we believe that providing a seamless and frictionless shopping experience across multiple channels, featuring innovative and curated product choices delivered in a fast and cost-efficient manner, will be a key enabler for future success.

Becoming a best-in-class interconnected retailer is growing in importance as the line between online and in-store shopping continues to blur and customers demand increased convenience and value. Under customer experience, we are focused on connecting our associates to customer needs and connecting our stores to our online experience. Under product authority, we are focused on connecting our product and services to customer needs, including offering local and customized assortments to meet the unique needs of our different communities. Under productivity and efficiency, we are focused on connecting our merchandise from our suppliers to our customers by optimizing our supply chain. Overall, we are collaborating more closely throughout our organization and with our business partners to build an interconnected experience for customers that offers an end-to-end solution for their home improvement needs.

Customer Experience

Customer experience is anchored on the principles of putting customers first and taking care of our associates. Our commitment to customer service has been and will continue to be a key part of the customer experience. But we recognize that the customer experience includes more than just customer service, and we have taken a number of steps to provide our customers with a seamless and frictionless shopping experience in our stores, online, on the job site or in their homes.

Our Customers. We serve three primary customer groups, and we have different approaches to meet their particular needs:

• Do-It-Yourself ("DIY") Customers. These customers are typically home owners who purchase products and complete their own projects and installations. Our associates assist these customers with specific product and installation questions both in our stores and through online resources and other media designed to provide product and project knowledge. We also offer a variety of clinics and workshops both to impart this knowledge and to build an emotional connection with our DIY customers.

• Do-It-For-Me ("DIFM") Customers. These customers are typically home owners who purchase materials and hire third parties to complete the project or installation. Our stores offer a variety of installation services available to DIFM customers who purchase products and installation of those products from us in our stores, online or in their homes through in-home consultations. Our installation programs include many categories, such as flooring, cabinets, countertops, water heaters and sheds. In addition, we provide third-party professional installation in a number of categories sold through our in-home sales programs, such as roofing, siding, windows, cabinet refacing, furnaces and central air systems. This customer group is growing due to changing demographics, which we believe will increase demand for our installation services. Further, our focus on serving the professional customers, or "Pros", who perform these services for our DIFM customers will help us drive higher product sales.

• Professional Customers. These customers are primarily professional renovators/remodelers, general contractors, handymen, property managers, building service contractors and specialty tradesmen, such as installers. We recognize the great value our Pro customers provide to their clients, and we strive to make the Pro’s job easier. For example, we offer our Pros a wide range of special programs such as delivery and will-call services, dedicated sales and service staff, enhanced credit programs, designated parking spaces close to store entrances and bulk pricing programs for both online and in-store purchases. In addition, we maintain a loyalty program, Pro Xtra, that provides our Pros with discounts on useful business services, exclusive product offers and a purchase tracking tool to enable receipt lookup online and job tracking of purchases across all forms of payment.

With our acquisition of Interline Brands, Inc. ("Interline") in August 2015, we established a platform in the maintenance, repair and operations ("MRO") market where we serve primarily institutional customers (such as educational and healthcare institutions), hospitality businesses, and national apartment complexes. We also gained additional competencies relevant to our large professional customers, including outside sales and account management, expanded assortment of product, expanded financing options and last mile delivery capabilities.

We recognize that our Pros have differing needs depending on the type of work they perform. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive set of capabilities for our professional customers to provide solutions across every purchase opportunity, such as supplying both recurring MRO needs and renovation products and services to property managers or providing inventory management solutions for specialty tradesmen’s replenishment needs. We believe that by bringing our best resources to bear for each individual customer, we can provide a differentiated customer experience and enhanced value proposition for our professional customers.

We help our DIY, DIFM and Pro customers finance their projects by offering private label credit products through third-party credit providers. Our private label credit program includes other benefits, such as a 365-day return policy and, for our Pros, commercial fuel rewards and extended payment terms. In fiscal 2016, our customers opened approximately 4.2 million new The Home Depot private label credit accounts, and at fiscal year end the total number of The Home Depot active account holders was approximately 13 million. Private label credit card sales accounted for approximately 23% of sales in fiscal 2016.