Lowe’s Reports DIY Sales Increase [CRAFT NEWS]

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Home improvement retail giants Lowe's and Home Depot have reported sustained increased sales due to the popularity of DIY projects.

Lowe's Reports DIY Sales Boost

Buoyed by continued rising house prices and relative immunity to the devastation the web is wreaking on other retail-based industries, DIY sales continue to surge in the U.S., the Financial Times reports.

Lowe’s, which boasts nearly 1,900 stores and about 270,000 staff members, has followed rival Home Depot in underlining that U.S. consumers’ appetite to spend on home improvement shows no sign of easing. Its same-store sales in the three months leading up t January 29 jumped 5.5 percent. “Lowe’s struck a relatively bullish note” for 2016, as it forecast sales growth of a whopping 4 percent, according to the Financial Times.

Robert Niblock, the chief executive of Lowe’s, acknowledged that a mild winter has encouraged people to spend on their gardens and outdoor home improvements. That helped propel profits for the quarter to $541 million, excluding the cost of existing an Australian joint venture, up 20 percent from a year ago.

It clocked sales of $13.2 billion, which is better than last year’s $12.5billion, and stronger than the $13.1 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts.

Lowe’s shares climbed 1.7 percent in pre-market trading.