This is a special time of year for home improvement giant Home Depot (HD), as reports emerged that its annual Celebration of Service event is firing up. This is the 15th year in a row the event has taken place, and looks to deliver on a promise made long ago. Investors are a bit ambivalent, meanwhile, and sent shares down fractionally in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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The Celebration of Service campaign, reports note, is designed to help with “…improving the homes and lives of U.S. veterans.” A report direct from Home Depot noted that there are “…still over 30,000 veterans experiencing homelessness,” and so, from Patriot Day—September 11—to Veterans Day, Home Depot’s associate volunteer force, Team Depot, will go out to perform “…hundreds of projects” designed to make veterans’ lives and homes better.
The project focuses on several key points, including home repairs, modifications for accessibility, renovations at certain housing facilities, projects that help lower energy costs—probably like insulation—and rebuilding after disasters. The Home Depot Foundation, which supports the project, planned to spend $750 million on these projects by 2030, and appears well on track to do so, having already put up over $600 million so far, according to reports.
And Another Raid
Meanwhile, Home Depot continues to function as a trap line for Border Patrol agents, as a Hollywood Home Depot found itself the target of an immigration enforcement raid on Sunday afternoon. The store on Sunset Boulevard found masked Border Patrol agents descending on the parking lot and detaining at least two people in an unmarked vehicle.
Naturally, bystanders surged in, the report noted, and federal agents responded to the surging crowd with pepper spray. No one is quite sure why the operation was carried out there, though the obvious answer seems to apply: because that is where the illegal immigrants most likely were at the time.
Is Home Depot a Good Long-Term Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on HD stock based on 18 Buys and six Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 14.62% rally in its share price over the past year, the average HD price target of $445.14 per share implies 6.86% upside potential.
