Lowe's Stock: Buy, Sell, or Hold
Housing remains a necessity regardless of economic conditions. Nonetheless, in times of high interest rates, people are generally less willing to buy new homes and upgrade their current ones, dampening sales at home improvement retailers like Lowe's Companies (NYSE: LOW).
Yet, Lowe's stock has performed well despite the macro environment challenges, producing a total return of nearly 35% over the past year. Anytime a company's share price increases against declining sales (we'll get to that in a moment), it's worth examining why and whether investors should buy, sell, or hold.
Lowe's experienced a decrease in net sales for its fiscal 2023 over the prior year. But given the challenges posed by high interest rates affecting the robust housing market -- a significant revenue source for the company -- it's understandable that sales were down. Specifically, Lowe's posted $86.3 billion in sales for fiscal 2023, marking a notable 12.4% decrease from the $97.1 billion achieved in fiscal 2022.
Source Fool.com
