U.S. DIY and Professional Home Improvement macroeconomic environment remains weak in Q1 2024 (5)

May 14, 2024 Jeffrey Cohen, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. 

Amazon.com
Let's look at Amazon's Q1 2024 sales and pricing performance. Not sure we can isolate home improvement, but we can capture global retail consumer trends. We will not be reviewing AWS, only Amazon Retail.

Dave Fildes - Vice President, Investor Relations
Andy Jassy - Chief Executive Officer
Brian Olsavsky - Chief Financial Officer

Increasing breadth in stores items, more selection: "Starting with our stores business, despite having hundreds of millions of items and the broadest selection available, we remain intensely focused on adding even more selection."

"We've recently launched a new generative AI tool that enables sellers to simply provide a URL to their own website, and we automatically create high-quality product detail pages on Amazon. Already, over 100,000 of our selling partners have used one or more of our GenAI tools."

"We remain focused on making sure we're offering everyday low prices, which we know is even more important to our customers in this uncertain economic environment. As our results show, customers are shopping, but remain cautious, trading down on price when they can and seeking out deals."

Speed in fulfillment matters

​"In this past Q1, we delivered to Prime members at our fastest speeds ever. In March, across our top 60 largest U.S. metro areas, nearly 60% of Prime members orders arrived the same or next day. And globally, in cities like Toronto, London, and Tokyo, about three out of four items were delivered the same or next day. Faster delivery times have another important effect. As we get items to customers this fast, customers choose Amazon to fulfill their shopping needs more frequently, and we can see the results in various areas, including how fast our Everyday Essentials business is growing and the continued increase in Prime member purchase frequency and total spend with us."

Amazon took market share from all retailers
"In the North America segment, first quarter revenue was $86.3 billion, an increase of 12% year-over-year. In the international segment, revenue was $31.9 billion, an increase of 11% year-over-year, excluding the impact of foreign exchange. "

Emerson electric Company (EMR)

Colleen Mettler - Vice President, Investor Relations
Lal Karsanbhai - President & Chief Executive Officer
Mike Baughman - Chief Financial Officer
Ram Krishnan - Chief Operating Officer

CEO Karsanbhai said, " We continue to have confidence in the underlying market conditions, driven by demand in the process and hybrid markets aligned with secular macro trends; energy security and affordability, sustainability, nearshoring and digital transformation."

"The P&L execution was nearly flawless in the quarter. Underlying sales grew 8% operations leveraged at 54% expanding EBITDA by 140 basis points to 26% and delivering 25% EPS growth and 32% free cash flow growth. 2024 is the year of execution with no major portfolio moves planned. And through the first half, we feel confident and have raised our outlook for the year."

"Sales, operating leverage and adjusted earnings, all exceeded Q2 expectations. Stronger volumes were driven by outstanding operational performance and more backlog conversion than expected. Price/cost and business segment mix were also more favorable than expected."

China weakness in the factory overshadowed by strength in India, europe, Middle East and the rest of Asia. "Factory automation demand remained soft with continued weakness in China. Europe, Asia and the Middle East were particularly strong in the quarter with persistent strength in process markets driven by energy transition and traditional energy markets. One noteworthy example is India, which has seen double-digit growth in five of the last six quarters, including this quarter, driven by broad economic expansion across multiple segments."

All this growth, with expanding margins
"In Q2 gross margin was 52.2%, a 430 basis point improvement from the prior year."