Is Lowe’s Companies (LOW) The Best Home Improvement Stocks To Buy Now?

We recently compiled the list of the 9 Best Home Improvement Stocks to Buy Now according to the hedge funds using the latest sentiment data. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW) stands against the other home improvement stocks.

Home improvement stocks belong to those companies that are typically involved in the home improvement and construction industries. These firms make and sell products used by home owners, builders, and other construction professionals. Naturally, this means that their performance is dependent on the state of the housing industry and the economy - with robust economic growth and high spending allowing them to make more money and grow valuations

The real estate industry is dependent for the most part on interest rates. This is because higher rates mean builders and buyers find it harder to raise capital for their projects and purchases. So, it's natural that home building and home improvement stocks have fluctuated in 2024 as the market adjusts its interest rate cut expectations heading into the year's second half. To understand this performance, we can take a look at how pure play home building stocks have performed and whether their performance also tracks building materials and related stocks.

Indexes that track the former group are up by as much as 52% over the past twelve months as a housing shortage in the US coupled with a tight market created new demand for builders. In fact, these gains (from June 2nd, 2023) had stood at as much as 61% by March 21st when the Federal Reserve had indicated that it could announce as many as three interest rate cuts in 2024. Since then, these stocks have lost roughly 5% due to difficult to tame inflation which has toned down Wall Street interest rate cuts.

Similarly, and as we alluded to earlier, home improvement stocks have mirrored home building stocks. Indexes that track building materials and fixtures are up by roughly 49% over the past twelve months. They have mirrored home building stocks because the growing demand for houses and other buildings means that products such as flooring, plumbing, and piping also sell in higher quantities. Year to date though, and just like home building stocks, home improvement stocks have pared back some of their gains. The peak was on the 21st of March, and between June 2nd, 2023, and March 21st, the gains had stood at roughly 53%. And since then, these stocks have also shed roughly 5% of their gains.

Looking at this, it's clear that interest rates and home improvement stocks are as tightly linked as they can be. Therefore, the next important thing to analyze when it comes to these stocks is the current inflationary, interest rate, and broader macroeconomic environments. On this front, the close of May 2024 provided an important data set in the form of the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index. The Fed's preferred inflation measure, data from the Commerce Department shows that the PCE rose by 0.3% in April, meeting economist estimates. On an annualized basis, this meant that inflation was at 2.7% in April, still higher than the Fed's goal of 2%, but the data was not a clear cut indicator for a rate cut.

This is because consumer spending, which determines how the economy will perform, slowed down to 2% in the first quarter after the previous reading of 3.3%. After the data release, trackers showed that traders were slightly more optimistic about a potential interest rate cut in September. These odds jumped to 53% after the data release, four percentage points higher than the previous reading of 49%. Crucially, the data confirmed that inflation is not permanent, and the Fed's two decade high interest rates are continuing to achieve their goal of tampering down prices. By June 2024 start, 47% of investors polled by the CME Fed Watch tool are expecting a 25 basis point cut in the Fed's September meeting.

One Fed official who would like to wait before cutting rates is the Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari. In a recent talk with CNBC, the Fed official shared:

I don't think we should rule anything out at this point. We are all committed to getting inflation all the way back down to our two percent target. The most recent inflation print that we got on the CPI data was largely better than the earlier prints from the first three months. But still not where we needed to get to. So it wasn't getting worse, but we just need to wait and see. I think right now we're in a good position because the labor market remains strong in the US. So we have the luxury of being able to sit here until we gain confidence on where inflation is headed.

With these details in mind, let's take a look at some top home improvement stocks that hedge funds are buying.

Our Methodology

To make our list of the best home improvement stocks to buy according to hedge funds, we made a list of stocks that sell items such as home improvement equipment, paints, farming hardware, and others. Then we picked out those that had the highest number of hedge fund investors in Q1 2024. Why do we care about what hedge funds do. The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Home improvement tool

3. Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW)

Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders In Q1 2024: 60

Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW) is the well known American home improvement retailer. The average of 30 one year average analyst share price targets is $252.22, and the shares are rated Buy on average.

As of Q1 2024 end, 60 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey's database were Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW)'s stakeholders. The fund with the most valuable stake was Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke, and John Campbell's Arrowstreet Capital as it owned two million shares that were worth $531 million.

Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW) forward price to earnings ratio is 18.35, which is lower than the average large-cap stock. This means that the stock might not undergo a significant correction should investor perception of home improvement stocks shift for whatever reason in the future. Over the past four years, the shares have gained roughly 85%, despite the fact that revenue growth has been in the red. The company was able to increase its earnings per share from $7.77 in 2021 to above $13 over the last 12 months. Mr. Market is confident that Lowe's can deliver, and perhaps a higher potential contribution from professional customers to its revenue mix is responsible for the optimism.

One way in which we can check what's going on under the proverbial 'hood' of a stock is to see what the hedge funds are saying. For Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW), here's what Aristotle Capital Management, LLC had to say in its Q1 2024 investor letter:

We had previously been investors in Home Depot. Over much of the past decade Home Depot had, in our opinion, executed better than Lowe’s—expanding its presence with large professional customers and increasing its store productivity. However, with Lowe’s hiring of former Home Depot executive Marvin Ellison in 2018, we believe Lowe’s has started the process of closing the gap to better compete with its nearest rival.

The fund then proceeds to share what it believes can prove to be catalysts for Lowe's stock in the future. According to its analysis, these include:

• Market share gains through improvements to Lowe’s supply chains, upgraded IT systems and enhanced omnichannel sales, which include “buy online, pick up in store” purchases;

• Increased share gains with professionals due to the company’s renewed focus on offering products and services for this larger-scale customer base (Lowe’s estimates a professional make ~70 store visits per year versus just ~4 per year for a “do-it-yourself” customer); and

• Increased profitability and sales per square foot of retail space, as the company has shifted its focus from geographical expansion toward improving store efficiency.

Overall, LOW ranks in 3rd place among the 9 best home improvement stocks to buy now. You can visit the 9 Best Home Improvement Stocks to Buy Now to see the other home improvement stocks that are on the hedge fund radar. While we acknowledge the potential of LOW as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than LOW but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. The article was originally published at Insider Monkey.