Lowe's profit falls 19%
Bad weather and thin wallets hammer home improvement retailer's earnings. The company cuts its outlook and culls new-store list.
BANGALORE (Reuters) -- Lowe's reported a 19% drop in quarterly profit as bad weather and the recession kept shoppers away. The retailer forecast current-quarter earnings below Wall Street estimates, sending its shares down more than 9%.
The second-largest home improvement retailer behind Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) also trimmed its store expansion plans for North America, citing declining demand.
Lowe's (LOW, Fortune 500), which now expects to open about 35 to 45 stores in North America in 2010, said it had also decided to abandon several projects.
In the second quarter ended on July 31, Lowe's said it had earned $759 million, or 51 cents a share, down from $938 million, or 63 cents a share, a year earlier.
Excluding a pretax charge of $48 million related mainly to the projects Lowe's no longer plans to pursue, profit was 54 cents a share, in line with the analysts' average forecast, according to Reuters Estimates.
Sales at the company, whose products range from gardening supplies and plumbing equipment to appliances and furniture, fell 4.6% to $13.8 billion. Sales at stores open at least a year, an important retail measure, fell 9.5%.
For the third quarter, Lowe's forecast earnings of 21 cents to 25 cents a share, while analysts had expected 27 cents.
The company said it expected total sales to fall 2% to 5%, with a same-store sales decline of 6% to 10%.
Lowe's shares were down 9.3% at $20.69 in early trading. 
