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Lowe's (LOW) Begins Spring Preparations, Ramps Up Hiring

Lowe's Companies, Inc. LOW seems to be on its toes to make the most of the spring season, its busiest selling period, with plans to employ more than 53,000 workers at its stores. The hiring will take place for available seasonal, part-time and full-time positions across the company’s more than 1,700 U.S. stores.

This Mooresville, NC-based company will roll out hiring events over the next three months in all store locations to meet the spring hiring needs. All the workers are eligible to join in the company’s quarterly bonus program. Also, its seasonal employees will benefit from competitive pay and a 10% employee discount.

Management believes that the hiring events help the company to better serve consumers and operate stores more efficiently.

Growth Initiatives

Apart from hiring seasonal employees, the company is making progress on key sales initiatives such as inventory levels, job lot quantities, Pro service levels, better product presentation, in-store merchandising and labor scheduling.

Also, the company’s strong digital presence has been aiding its performance for a while. Notably, it achieved 3% comps growth in the third quarter of fiscal 2019 on lowes.com, driven by solid efforts to enhance online business. Moreover, management aims to continue augmenting omni-channel capabilities and enhancing consumers’ digital shopping experience.

In this respect, the company plans to shift its online business to the Google cloud platform by the first half of fiscal 2020. Also, it is introducing features such as one-click checkout and scheduling of delivery. Such well chalked out efforts are likely to boost the company’s comps. For fiscal 2019, Lowe’s expects 3% rise in comparable sales.

Further, management is optimistic about the home improvement business, backed by rising income and real residential investment. In third-quarter fiscal 2019, comparable sales for the U.S. home improvement business grew 3%. In fact, the unit’s comps were positive in 15 geographic regions across the United States for the second successive quarter.

In addition, Pro customers have been a significant growth driver for Lowe's. In a bid to continue augmenting sales from pro customers, the company has been augmenting pro-focused brands. Further, Lowe’s refurbished the pro-service business website, LowesForPros.com, to give special attention to the needs of pro customers.


We note that these upsides have helped shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company to rally 16.8% in the past six months compared with the industry’s growth of 5.2%.

3 Stocks to Consider

Target Corp. TGT has a long-term earnings growth rate of 7.5% and sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Builders FirstSource, Inc. BLDR delivered positive earnings surprise of 20% in the last reported quarter. It currently sports a Zacks Rank #1.

Best Buy Co., Inc. BBY has a long-term earnings growth rate of 8.7% and a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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Lowe's Companies, Inc. (LOW) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
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