The Home Depot
Numbers
What the show said, with receipts
Every figure the hosts put on the record for The Home Depot, with its source and the date it was captured. The audited statements from the company's own filings are under Financials.
Freshness
5
Current (≤6 mo)
3
Recent (≤18 mo)
3
Older
Freshness is measured from each figure’s capture date, not from the episode date. An older figure is not wrong; it is a figure that has had time to move.
Reported figures
Net sales (fiscal 2025)
8 mo$164.7B
fiscal year ended February 1, 2026; the hosts put a little over half of it with professional contractors
[Home Depot fiscal 2025 10-K (EDGAR companyfacts) + Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2026-02
- Ben:So the business today, it's a $165 billion a year revenue business. Not a super fast-growing company, grows at 2.5% to 4.5% per year. A little over half the revenue is pro contractors and half is that consumer DIY retail customer.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Today: Pro & DIY]
- Net sales of $164,683 million for fiscal 2025, as reported in the consolidated statements of earnings.[Home Depot fiscal 2025 10-K, accession 0001628280-26-019436]
Compounded return since the 1981 IPO
current~25% / yr
$1,000 at the IPO with dividends reinvested is about $17 million today; the same $1,000 in the S&P 500 is about $170,000
[Acquired episode The Home Depot (citing total-return data through 2026)] · as of 2026-09
- Ben:Home Depot went public in 1981, one year after Apple Computer. And astonishingly, if you put $1,000 into Home Depot and Apple and their IPOs and you held them all today, your investment in Home Depot would beat your investment in Apple. And if you reinvested the dividends that it paid out, it has compounded at nearly 25% per year for 45 years.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Intro]
- Ben:That makes it the number one performing stock in the S&P 500 in total investment return from the day that it went public to today. So that $1,000 invested in the IPO would be worth about $17 million dollars today.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Intro]
Market capitalization at the episode
current$350B
the 45th most valuable public company in the world and the largest specialty retailer; only general merchants (Walmart, Amazon, Costco) are bigger
[Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2026-09
- Ben:It is the world's largest specialty retailer. The only retailers larger are general, not in a specific vertical like home improvement. So think Walmart or Amazon or Costco. Those are bigger. But the other vertical ones are not. In fact, Home Depot is the 45th most valuable publicly traded company in the world, period, with a $350 billion market cap.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Intro]
Stores
current2,400
about 15 new a year; 90 percent of the real estate owned; 86 percent of stores in the United States; the count sat near 2,300 from 2008 to 2019
[Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2026-09
- Ben:They have 2,400 stores today, opening about 15 new ones each year. They own 90% of their real estate. They only lease about 10% of the stores since once capital stopped being an issue for them and they started being free cash flow-generative, they realized that actually, a competitive advantage for us is lock up the best real estate and hold it forever and don't get held hostage in a real estate negotiation when a lease comes up.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Today: Pro & DIY]
- Ben:In 2008, they had grown to 2,300 stores. And today, 18 years later, they are at just 2,400 stores.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Frank Blake's Turnaround]
Employees
current472,000
more than any US big tech company except Amazon, any bank, almost every carmaker and hotel chain, and any restaurant chain including Starbucks
[Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2026-09
- Ben:And today they employ an astonishing 470,000 people. That's more than any big tech company in the US except for Amazon, more than any bank in the world, more than almost every car company, hotel chain. More employees than any restaurant chain also, including Starbucks.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Intro]
Gross margin
8 mo33.3%
pitched in 1978 at 30 percent against an industry standard of 45; the Nardelli years took it from the 28-to-30 range to 33, where it has stayed
[Home Depot fiscal 2025 10-K (EDGAR companyfacts) + Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2026-02
- Ben:The pitch is customers are going to love it because we're going to have the lowest prices. We're only going to make a 30% gross margin instead of what's industry standard in hardware retail at that time, 45%.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Ken Buys Handy Dan, Bernie & Arthur Fired]
- Ben:The gross margins are still lower than typical retail and certainly lower than that 45% that we talked about way back when, but they went from this like 28, 29, 30 range to pretty squarely 33% gross margins, which is not as low as Walmart, let alone Costco's razor-thin margins.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Nardelli's Public Downfall & Firing]
- Gross profit of $54,865 million on net sales of $164,683 million in fiscal 2025, a 33.3 percent gross margin.[Home Depot fiscal 2025 10-K, accession 0001628280-26-019436]
Inventory turns
current4.5x / yr
Lowe's 3.3x, Costco 13x; about half of the inventory is financed by suppliers through payment terms, as it was in 1979
[Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2026-09
- Ben:They turn their inventory about 4.5 times per year compared to Lowe's turning 3.3. Just for reference, Costco turns their inventory 13 times per year.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Today: Pro & DIY]
- Ben:It is totally unbelievable that The Home Depot can turn their inventory 4.5 times per year, given that the goods that they carry are super high-dollar specialty, and they have 35,000 SKUs against Costco's 4,000.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Today: Pro & DIY]
Pro versus DIY customer, per year
12 yr66 vs 5 visits
a 2015 figure the hosts carry forward: the professional spends about $6,500 a year across 66 visits, the DIY customer about $330 across five
[Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 2015
- Ben:The average Home Depot DIY customer interacts with the company about five times a year, spends about $330. The average professional customer would interact 66 times a year with an annual spend of $6,500.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Arthur Blank Takes CEO & Early Cracks]
Founding capital (1978)
49 yr$2M for 50%
forty investors at $50,000 each after Perot's $2M-for-70% deal collapsed; Langone took 5 percent; held to today, the stake returned well over 50,000 times the capital
[Acquired episode The Home Depot; Built from Scratch (Marcus and Blank)] · as of 1978
- Ben:And the way the cap table breaks down now is the investors own 50%, Ken gets 5%, in exchange for, you know, putting this deal together, finding the capital. And I think he put in something like $100K of his own.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Ross Perot Almost Buys Home Depot]
- David:That $2 million from the initial Home Depot investor group bought 50% of the company in 1978. By not cashing out here at a 2x return, those investors, if they held to today, would have gotten well north of a 50,000x return on their capital.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Goes Public & Expands]
Market cap at the 1981 IPO
46 yr$32M
a four-store chain raising about $4 million from Bear Stearns with interest rates above 20 percent; about $122 million in today's dollars
[Acquired episode The Home Depot] · as of 1981
- David:They raise $4 million in total in the IPO at a $32 million initial market capitalization post-offering.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Goes Public & Expands]
- Ben:I mean, you could get in as a public shareholder at a $32 million valuation. I mean, even if you inflation adjust that, that's $122 million today. Just think about that. A company went public at a total market cap of $122 million. It had so much running room ahead of it.[Acquired The Home Depot, ch. Home Depot Goes Public & Expands]