Home Depot (HD): a record number of tracked funds, a stock down 28%, and a tariff refund in the profit

Home Depot closed at $282.85 on October 2, 2026, down 28.4% over twelve months and just above the period’s low of $282.46 the day before; the high, $395.06, was on October 3, 2025, the first day of the window. At that price the company was worth $282.2 billion and traded at 19.8 times its last twelve months of earnings per share ($14.29), with a 3.28% dividend yield. At the same time, more of the managers this site tracks owned it than in any quarter of its records, which for Home Depot start in late 2021.

Home Depot names its fiscal year after the year in which it begins: “fiscal 2025” ran from February 3, 2025 to February 1, 2026. This article uses the company’s labels; the charts on the stock page label each year by the calendar year in which it ends.

Sales up with acquisitions, profit down

In fiscal 2025, sales rose 3.2% to $164.7 billion, but the 10-K credits about $6.3 billion of them to two acquired distributors, SRS (bought in June 2024) and GMS (September 2025) — so without acquisitions sales would not have grown. Net income fell 4.4% to $14.2 billion, and the 8.6% net margin was the lowest since fiscal 2017. Fiscal 2024 also had a 53rd week, worth about $2.5 billion of sales, which makes the year-on-year comparison harder.

The quarter ended February 1, 2026 is compared with a 14-week quarter a year earlier. In the latest quarter, profit rose for the first time in the table, but the 10-Q says about $685 million of refunds of IEEPA tariffs reduced the cost of goods sold — more, before taxes, than the $215 million increase in net income. Comparable sales grew 1.7%. The company kept its fiscal 2026 outlook, earnings per share flat to up 4% from $14.23, which already counts on those refunds.

On August 12, 2026, chief executive Ted Decker began a temporary medical leave; the company expects him back “within the next few months,” and Ann-Marie Campbell and finance chief Richard McPhail are running the CEO’s office. The stock fell 3.1% that day. In September it slid 13.8% from August 28 to September 30, with no single day down more than 3% and no 8-K from Home Depot; Lowe’s fell 11.4% over the same days and the S&P 500 0.9%. The filings do not explain the decline.

Who held it at the end of June

Ten managers held the stock on June 30, with 9.8 million shares between them, up from 5.1 million in March. Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine opened the largest position; none of his 13Fs since 2016 had Home Depot. The Gates Foundation Trust, managed by Cascade rather than by Bill Gates personally, opened a 1 million-share position (it briefly held 5,692 shares in 2023). Cliff Asness’s AQR roughly quintupled its stake and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking, back in the stock since the first quarter, added 83%; Israel Englander’s Millennium cut 85%. Tom Gayner’s Markel has held it every quarter since 2016. A 13F does not say on which day of the quarter shares were bought, and these values are at the June 30 price; at the October 2 price they were about 20% lower — Lone Pine’s stake $736 million rather than $918 million.

Insiders and the dividend

No insider bought Home Depot on the open market in the twelve months to early October. Ten sales, none under a 10b5-1 plan, added up to $6.7 million; the largest seller was finance chief Richard McPhail ($3.03 million), $2.09 million of it on August 19, 2026, on the same form on which he exercised options. Ted Decker sold nothing: the $3.83 million next to his name are shares withheld by the company to pay taxes, which is not a sale.

February 2026 marked the 156th consecutive quarter of cash dividends, according to the company, with a 1.3% raise to $2.33 a quarter, after 2.2% in 2025. By our count the annual total has risen for 16 straight years (2010–2025); the company does not state such a number. Daily data is on the Home Depot page. Not investment advice.