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Housing Starts, Permits Mixed; Q3 Beats for TGT, LOW, TJX

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Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Pre-market indexes look poised to give back some of the gains made in Tuesday’s regular session, with only the the Nasdaq +5 points at this hour. Hard to see why exactly, though — with the ink on the Infrastructure Package not yet dry, we see mixed numbers for the housing market and earnings beats across the board for Target (TGT - Free Report) , Lowe’s (LOW - Free Report) and The TJX Companies (TJX - Free Report) .

Perhaps the Coupa survey of national retailers is giving some investors pause: with supply chain costs surging this holiday shopping season, no fewer than 91% of retailers expect a negative impact to their Q4 revenues. All supply chain costs are up: 600% in container shipping, 20% in trucking and 29% in rail. This year, 71% of retailers expect to offer fewer Black Friday sales, largely due to higher costs in bringing goods to their stores.

Housing Starts for October missed expectations to 1.52 million, -0.7% month over month. Analysts had been looking for an incremental increase from the previous month’s downwardly revised 1.53 million. This marks the second-straight month housing starts have gone lower. Even as multi-unit starts grew +6.8% for the month, the real money is in single-family homes, which dropped -3.9%. Only the Midwest region gained for the month, +5.6%.

Building Permits, on the other hand, saw 4% month-over-month growth to 1.65 million from an unrevised 1.59 million units for September. Again, the bigger gains were in the multi-family space: buildings with 5+ units grew +6.5% last month, while single-family permits were +2.7%. Building permits are generally seen as a forward indicator of future housing starts, which may point to higher levels in starts in the coming months.

Target shares are sinking nearly -5% in today’s pre-market, following the big-box retailer’s beat on both top and bottom lines: $3.03 per share amounted to a +5.57% surprise over the Zacks consensus $2.87 per share, on $25.65 billion in quarterly sales which presented a +3% positive surprise, and more than +10% year over year. That said, Target shares had been up nearly 51% year-to-date; this looks like a “sell the news” scenario. For more on TGT’s earnings, click here.

Lowe’s Companies, however, are nearly +3% before the opening bell on its 17.17% earnings beat to $2.73 per share in the quarter, on $22.92 billion in sales for a +4.6% positive revenue surprise. Full-year revenue guidance was also raised, which may account for part of the early morning gains; Lowe’s stock was already up +52% year to date. For more on LOW’s earnings, click here.

The TJX Companies beat expectations by 3 cents on its bottom line to 84 cents per share, a +3.7% earnings surprise and nicely ahead of the 71 cents per share posted in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $12.53 billion for the discount retailer (owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall’s stores), for a +1.78% sales beat and above the $10.12 billion reported in the year-ago quarter. For more on TJX’s earnings, click here.

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