Earnings

Solid Home Depot earnings sign of consumer shift: Analyst

Home Depot beats Street estimates, raises forecast
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Home Depot beats Street estimates, raises forecast
Home Depot beats estimates
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Home Depot beats estimates
Cramer: People are spending more on homes
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Cramer: People are spending more on homes

Home Depot's better-than-expected earnings and revenue numbers show the consumer is spending "more and more" on their home after a harsher-than-usual winter, a leading analyst said Tuesday. (Tweet this)

Excluding one-time items, the company said Tuesday it earned an adjusted $1.16 per share. Revenue rose 6 percent to $20.89 billion. Analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.15 per share and revenue of $20.81 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Home Depot share prices were down less than 1 percent by midday Tuesday. (Get the latest quote here.) As of Monday's close, the stock was up nearly 9 percent this year.

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The company's 7.1 percent comparable store sales growth in the United States was particularly impressive against the backdrop of poor first quarter earnings results among other retailers, said Brian Nagel, senior equity analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.

"This is one more indication that the consumer is spending, but they're spending more and more on their home, so there's a shift in spending happening," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Nagel said both external and internal factors were at play in the first quarter. While he believes the housing market is improving, which translates into better results for Home Depot, he said the company, the world's largest home improvement chain by sales, was executing "perfectly."

The Northeast, where Home Depot has a large number of stores, experienced heavy snowfall this winter, with cities including New York and Boston hit with significant storms.

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"We had a stronger-than-expected start to the year as we experienced a more normal spring across much of the country and continued recovery of the U.S. housing market," Chief Executive Craig Menear said in a statement.

The company's total same-store sales rose 6.1 percent in the first quarter. Analysts on average had expected a 5.5 percent rise, according to Consensus Metrix.

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Home Depot raised its profit forecast for the year ending February 2016 to a range of $5.24 to $5.27 per share from $5.11 to $5.17. The revised forecast includes the benefit of a favorable settlement of a tax audit and the impact of stock buybacks this year.

The company also increased its full-year sales growth forecast to 4.2 percent to 4.8 percent from 3.5 percent to 4.7 percent.

Earlier this year, Home Depot announced that it would hire more than 80,000 workers for the spring season, the company's busiest. The hires at stores and distribution facilities around the country will include part-time and seasonal positions.

Read MoreHome Depot hiring more than 80,000 workers for spring

As for the breach of its payment systems that Home Depot confirmed in September, Nagel said the incident does not matter to the stock and the market will look through it. Last year, Home Depot said it had discovered malware in its system that may have compromised personal data for customers who used payment cards at its U.S. and Canadian locations after April 2014.

CNBC's Terri Cullen and Tom DiChristopher, and Reuters contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Nagel does not own Home Depot shares. Oppenheimer & Co. does not hold greater than a 1 percent share of the stock, and doesn't provide investment banking services to Home Depot.