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Home Depot Extends Tie Up With PPG to Offer Olympic Stains

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The Home Depot, Inc. (HD - Free Report) has extended its tie up with PPG Industries, Inc. (PPG - Free Report) and plans to sell the latter’s renowned OLYMPIC brand stains at its 2,000 domestic outlets by the end of second-quarter 2018. This liaison brings together the Home Depot’s exterior stains and the PPG’s latest Olympic wood stains like Olympic MAXIMUM, Olympic ELITE and Olympic WATERGUARD, offering customers a wider range of top-quality assortments.

The Olympic products that are likely to be featured in Home Depot’s stores include Olympic Maximum Stain + Sealant in One with WEATHER-READY application, Olympic ELITE Advanced Stain + Sealant in One and Olympic WATERGUARD along with PPG premium paints, GLIDDEN paints and LIQUID NAILS adhesives.

Apart from the stain and paints brands, the deal includes the PPG’s latest innovation — Olympic SmartGuard, which will be available soon at some of the Home Depot domestic stores for the spring season. It will be launched with an aim to eliminate difficulties related to the weekend projects with a super-concentrated formula in a lightweight and convenient pouch package. Unlike traditional products which dry in 24-48 hours and require brushing for application, the Olympic SmartGuard is likely to dry in about an hour of its application and needs no brushing. As the SmartGuard is a spray-on application, it is less time-consuming and gives a long-lasting, water-resistant seal.

Among the America’s most trusted stain brand, PPG’s Olympic brand is expected to enhance the Home Depot’s product pipeline, leading to higher sales and profitability. Per sources, Home Depot’s arch-rival Lowe's Companies, Inc. (LOW - Free Report) is likely to cease the sale of Olympic paints and stains in its domestic stores this year. This, in turn, might give a boost to Home Depot’s sales.

Recently, Home Depot unveiled plans to hire more than 1,000 employees for its technology team in 2018 to fortify its tech base. This is in sync with the company’s $11.1-billion three-year strategic investment plan that was announced in December 2017. The new hires will include software engineering, user experience design, network engineering and product management, bolstering Home Depot’s strength of 2,800 existing tech staff by a third. Apart from aiding the company’s investment plan, the hiring will help fend off competition from the online biggie, Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) .

Meanwhile, this renowned home improvement retailer is gaining from strength in core business, relentless focus on affording innovative products and driving productivity.



These laudable endeavors have aided this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock’s rally in a year’s time. The stock surged as much as 18%, faring better than the industry’s gain of 13.1%

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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