Transcript
Dean Wehrli:
Welcome to New home Insights, the John Burns Real Estate Consulting podcast, about the US housing market. I’m your host Dean Wehrli. Today we have Jordan Broggi, the Vice President of finance for merchandising at Home Depot. Obviously the fluctuations and fortunes of a Home Depot can tell us a lot about what is happening or what will happen in the housing market. So we’re going to get Jordan’s take on how Home Depot’s doing, what he sees happening in the DIY and remodeling world, and what’s going on with lumber, of course. And then maybe more generally his take on the economy, since I’ve seen Jordan speak and he’s always one of the smartest persons in the room. Jordan, how’s it going?
Jordan Broggi:
Hey Dean, good. How are you doing?
Dean Wehrli:
I’m good. I think you guys are good too. Before we get into how good you guys are doing, why don’t you just give us a quick sense of your background, and what you do at Home Depot?
Jordan Broggi:
Sure. As you mentioned, I’m a VP of Finance here at the company. I’ve been here with Home Depot about seven years. My whole career has pretty much been in finance, economics and maybe the intersection of those two. I’ve had a few different roles at Home Depot. Right now, I lead finance for our merchandising group, which is the team that’s responsible for all product, sales, gross margin, our website, marketing, all that. So I help them budget forecast, analyze the business and anything else that they need me to do.
Dean Wehrli:
You’re kind of a Jack of all trades. And again, I’ve seen you talk and you definitely know your stuff. And part of this stuff right now is how Home Depot is doing, and really the amazing run that Home Depot has been on of late. It’s something like 20% year over year growth for what’s already a huge hundred billion dollar company. And this during a pandemic. What’s been happening?
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah. I guess, depending on where you want to snap the line, I stepped back in, I joined the company in 2013 and certainly housing and the industry was on a path back to growth. To put in perspective on it, back in 2010 we were probably 70 billion in sales, maybe a little less. Last year we were right at about 110 billion. So forget coronavirus or pandemic or anything else, we’ve certainly been on a great growth path during this whole decade. And then as you mentioned, in the COVID era, things have picked up. We started the year, we guided I think three and a half or 4% top line growth, which is several billion dollars for a big company like ours. And year to date, we’re sitting a little north of 15% year over year. And in the quarter we just reported, in the second quarter, we were up about 25% year on year. So on a big base, that’s a lot of dollars.
Dean Wehrli:
What’s fueling that right now, do you think?
Jordan Broggi:
In the year to date sense?
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah.
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah. I certainly think that there’s been probably no greater time or I guess no greater moment where the home has been so important. You’ve got people that are spending a lot of time at home. You’ve got a long list of things that anyone could do to fix up their home. If you think about how long the real punch list is that everyone has in the back of their minds, now they’ve got the time to do it because there’s other things that compete for time that maybe aren’t available. And at least right now they’ve got the money to do it. Certainly personal income is up significantly in the second quarter, despite lots of layoffs, the government support has been very large. And so you’ve got people stuck at home with money in their pocket. Certainly I think that’s a good combination for spend at a company like Home Depot.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. We’ve talked about it here with some other guests as well, is that folks have had a chance to be in their home, be trapped in their home and they’ve seen, here’s a lot of things I need to do to make this a better place. And you guys have been riding that wave to a certain extent.
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah, I think so. I mean some of it is maybe, I’m here at home and I’ve got the list of stuff I want to do. Some of it is, I’m going to think of my home differently. My home is now a place that school takes place for my kids, or a home is now a place that I work from much more frequently. And so it’s an office. Or my home, maybe outside the home is the only place that I entertain versus others. So it’s not just that I’m here and I’ve got things to do, but also the home is providing a lot more services if you will, for me, for my family, et cetera, than maybe it was even just six months ago.
Dean Wehrli:
How much is growth in the sector versus growth for Home Depot specifically? So a little while ago, your CEO said that, “Customers are consolidating the number of retailers they visit and are blending the physical and digital elements of the shopping experience, more than ever before.” I want you to tease that out a little bit for us. Let’s start with, is bigger better in your world?
Jordan Broggi:
Well, I certainly think that scale is important. It allows you to have low cost and customers care about low costs. It allows you to invest into an interconnected what we call experience for the customer. And so certainly there’s benefits with scale. And I think customers appreciate that. That’s not a new thing. We’ve been growing faster than the market for some time, and his comments on customers shopping fewer retailers is what we think is a more macro trend in retail in general, not limited to home improvement retail. So certainly we think that we’re advantaged in that way.
Dean Wehrli:
How about the digital versus physical aspect? Is digital the key to everything going forward and now?
Jordan Broggi:
Well again, certainly, and it’s not just us, if you look at any retailer performance during the COVID era, there has been more commerce that’s been tracked that has been transacted online, or I guess I should say an acceleration of things being transacted online. And it’s, it’s common sense, right? You want to make less trips to the store, from a safety perspective. But we really don’t look at it … We look at it, but we don’t like to think of it so singularly as it’s just digital, or how much I transact on my website is the only way to look at it. We’ve called it interconnected for as long as I’ve been here and what we’ve always meant by that is, that the store feeds off the website and the website feeds off the store.
Jordan Broggi:
And again, put coronavirus aside, the digital and the physical have to work together. It could be everything from, I want to check inventory before I go to the store, or maybe I want to go to the store and touch and feel it before I order it online. Maybe I’m in the store and I just need to find it. You can come up with all sorts of micro use cases, and the two really do need to work hand in hand and feed off of one another.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. The touch and feel is pretty critical. I’ve asked that about home builder guests here on this show before, and they’re still going to build models. These folks still need to touch and feel. That’s true for you as well isn’t it?
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah. Touch and feel is important and for some categories, it’s a lot more important than others. Inspiration is important. Sometimes just seeing the broader assortment can be inspiring. Talking to someone can be important. The orange apron is a key part of who we are and the in-store help you can receive. So again, it all has to work together. But we certainly see, we think the future of retail is a combination of digital and physical. It’s not one or the other.
Dean Wehrli:
Some folks, who shall remain nameless, have said in the past, not too distant past, that DIY or that do-it -yourself was dead or was on his last legs. Do you feel like gloating now?
Jordan Broggi:
Well, we certainly never said that.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. It wasn’t you.
Jordan Broggi:
DIY is a big part of our business, a big part of who we are. The pro is a big part of who we are as well. Both have been growing for us for some time, although until this year, the pro had actually been growing faster, but DIY was still growing. This year has been certainly the DIY boom. And is that, to some extent there’s hesitancy to let a pro into your home right now, with coronavirus. Some of it’s just DIY-ers have more time available. Again, we talked about that and just being at the home more, and being willing to take on projects themselves. And so a few different factors, but DIY is certainly booming right now for sure.
Dean Wehrli:
That’s a good point, but historically DIY and remodeling was an even bigger part of your sector years ago. I believe I have that right. The relatively small ticket stuff, as opposed to the builder institutional stuff, what you’re calling the pro. I know you can’t talk too much about future with too much specificity, but what would have to happen for this DIY growth to be sort of permanent or to continue?
Jordan Broggi:
Listen, I think, again, both we’re growing, both are still growing, both are both growing much faster. It’s just the DIY is out in front right now. How much of that is long term or short term? Don’t know. We do feel really good about the millennial generation, which I think 10 years ago, we received a lot of questions, is this group really going to do DIY? Or even at the time it was, is this group ever even going to own homes? And that generation is proving to be a really solid customer for us, and very willing to do DIY. Certainly with things like YouTube and content being available online on how-to, the opportunities to some extent are greater than they ever have been to do DIY. So we love DIY.
Jordan Broggi:
We feel really good about, again, the current generation being a big part of that. We also love pro and there’s a lot of work that just is always going to be dominated by the pro, because there’s just some categories that very, very few homeowners are ever going to want to take on that project themselves. And we understand that, and again, we want to provide a great experience and a great assortment for both customers now and in the future.
Dean Wehrli:
That’s interesting that millennials … That actually was my next question. So the millennials aren’t going with E-handyman startup and having someone do everything for them. They’re really getting in there and doing it themselves, just like the boomers?
Jordan Broggi:
Well, I guess you’re maybe referencing a little bit more the way they might select a pro. So if I’m going to hire someone to do it for me, I maybe have more technology at my fingertips to find a pro. Although even in this modern era of an app for everything, word of mouth is still one of the most important ways that people find a pro. But that aside, yes. Again, it’s different. Some folks are more comfortable than others, some categories are more DIY friendly than others, but we’ve certainly seen great DIY growth from the millennials. That’s for sure. And beyond that, we’ve seen them become an increasing share of the homeowner population, which of course, you guys do a lot of work in this. Just the demographics of it have to push it that way eventually, but it certainly looks a lot more like we would have thought it would have. Maybe delayed a little bit, coming out of the great recession, but certainly it looks a lot more like we would have predicted, at least sitting here today.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah, definitely. Life stage eventually catches up. It caught up a little later with the current generation, but yeah, it has eventually, Hey, do you DIY? You yourself?
Jordan Broggi:
I do. I’m a huge DIY. In fact, I’m sitting right now at a table that I made from boards and stain and polyurethane from the Home Depot. But yeah, I love to … I’m just trying to think. This year, how about during COVID. I did a lot of the interior of my home, I’ve done some electrical work, moved some light fixtures around. Certainly on the outdoor side. Now I have my sons do most of my yard work for me now, but I’ve got the ECHO trimmer and stuff that I don’t quite trust them with, and I do a lot of the hedge trimming and whatnot. But yes, I am a pretty avid DIY-er.
Jordan Broggi:
Growing up, I did plumbing, I did tile, I worked construction through high school. So I’m comfortable with a lot of it. Now there’s some stuff that I’m not comfortable with for sure, and there’s some stuff that I just don’t have the time to get to myself, but I enjoy doing it. And I would say not a week goes by that I don’t visit the Home Depot probably two times.
Dean Wehrli:
Lucky you work there then, huh? Get a discount.
Jordan Broggi:
Oh no, our customers get the best price. No employee discounts. I tell you what, there’s nothing quite like Saturday mornings walking in and thinking about what you can conquer that day.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. I’ve seen you in the orange apron. Your LinkedIn picture has the orange apron on, and I’ve seen you talk at our events. And I know that, I think … Did you do that sort of, I don’t know if internship is not the right word, but you actually worked the floor at a Home Depot when you started?
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah. So everyone that works in our corporate office when they start at the company, spends some time in the store with an apron on helping customers. And I’ll tell you, it’s terrifying, because maybe an average Home Depot might have 35, maybe 40,000 items in it. And the number one question you get asked is, Hey, how do I find this? Or where’s that? Or how do I do this project, or that project? So I’ll tell you what I did, I hung out in departments that I was much more familiar with from a product or install standpoint, so I could be more helpful. And then the other thing I did was I downloaded the Home Depot mobile app to my phone, which is an incredible way to find pretty much any product in the store. It could get you within about five feet, and then you just got to use your eyes to get you the last little bit.
Dean Wehrli:
Wow. So I have to assume that you did it sort of undercover boss style, and you wore a terrible wig, and then you developed an emotional connection with a single mom who was just trying to build a better life for her and her kids? That had to have happened, right?
Jordan Broggi:
No.
Dean Wehrli:
I’m guessing.
Jordan Broggi:
No. Our company, our culture is very humble and down to earth, there’s no need for anyone to be undercover. We’re all in the business together. We all love being in the stores. My job wouldn’t exist if our frontline associates didn’t exist and didn’t do a great job selling over a hundred billion dollars worth of product. So it’s a lot of fun going to the store and learning from the associates there, and understanding how the day-to-day goes. And ultimately if you can help that customer and get them to what they need to for their project, it’s very satisfying.
Dean Wehrli:
So COVID, another lesson of COVID maybe, is this just-in-time distribution models expose some weaknesses maybe. It seems like it has paid during the pandemic to have product on hand. Has that been true for you folks?
Jordan Broggi:
Certainly. I mean, there’s been a lot of supply chain disruption, not talking about our industry, I’m talking about pick an industry, automotive, electronics, anywhere. There’s been all sorts of supply chain disruption, with things seizing up and plants shutting down. And in some cases that was okay, because maybe demand fell off a cliff. And other cases demand went the other way. And so it’s a huge challenge right now, certainly in retail and even outside of retail, it’s a big deal. So we obviously operate with our business turns about five times. So that means we have several months of inventory on hand at any given time. And so you’ve always got some buffer, but yeah, there are categories where it’s hard to get product, for sure. But we’re working through that. And again, it’s not a home improvement thing. It’s a global supply chain disruption caused by COVID.
Dean Wehrli:
But certainly again in a sense, maybe a bigger is better here too, because you’re more likely to have product on hand when the folks come to the store to get it.
Jordan Broggi:
Well, yeah. I guess it depends. I guess there may be different ways to think about that, but certainly we do have every store we like to keep in stock on everything. And so we’ve got that benefit when demand jumps, to be able to serve that. And then it gives you a little bit of time to work the supply side and get what you need.
Dean Wehrli:
You mentioned generational differences, or in this sense the not generational differences, boomers, millennials. Millennials are DIYing just as much as boomers. How about geographic differences, urban versus suburban, maybe even versus rural markets. How does your business shift in those different environments?
Jordan Broggi:
Well, obviously we are a very national retailer. I mean we’ve got a couple of stores in Manhattan and we’ve got a store in Minot North Dakota. So we are everywhere. And obviously we have a website that ships everywhere. And so to some extent, we really are a national player and we span very rural all the way to very urban. And what we’re seeing right now is really everywhere is up. In the quarter we just reported, every single market, every single region was up double digits from the year before. So there was a little bit of oddity that we saw, in the height of some of the early coronavirus lockdowns. I think that was late March, somewhere in there. I remember New York city effectively shut down. We did see some differences there from a customer behavior standpoint, where in densely urban areas it tended to need more lockdown. Things look very different than more rural areas. But now that things have sort of normalized out, it’s really just up everywhere.
Dean Wehrli:
We’ve talked a lot about, and we’ve heard a lot mostly anecdotally, about this urban to suburban movement for a few reasons, it’s better to shelter in place or easier to shelter in place in suburban environments. Or folks are going to be able to telecommute more. Have you been able to track that kind of movement with your store sales?
Jordan Broggi:
Well, I agree with you in the sense that in the COVID era, and how long this lasts, no one really knows. And how permanent some of these changes are, no one really knows. But it certainly is only a positive for demand for say single family housing, for more square footage, for bigger lot sizes. You can think of it along those lines. The reality is though, we were already in an inventory shortage pre COVID. So it’s not as if all of a sudden there’s all of this slack inventory that’s sitting in maybe a suburban market outside of an urban city center, that everyone’s just going to shift to. The inventory is just not there. And so again, I think it’s very positive from a demand standpoint for construction and for new units, but that’s going to take time to really see that play out. At least that’s the way I see it. I don’t know, maybe I probably see it differently.
Dean Wehrli:
Well, I was just wondering if you were able to track in the baldest sense, more suburban demand relative to urban demand that might signal that yeah, in reality, that shift is occurring.
Jordan Broggi:
Well again, our business is up everywhere right now and what we’re seeing is national. But even if there were to be a shift, I just don’t think we’d see it yet, right? So say you’re living in an urban, very tight, small home. Even if coronavirus has made you desire to move to the suburbs, until that inventory is there and you’re able to move, we’re not going to see that demand shift in our business immediately, right?
Dean Wehrli:
Gotcha. So it’s just not realizable or quantifiable quite yet because of that lack of inventory everywhere.
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah.
Dean Wehrli:
How about home decor? Home decor has been a big part of the Home Depot world, an increasing part of your business I think. What motivated you to lean in to that sector?
Jordan Broggi:
Well I guess it depends on how you define the decor, which is a little bit squishy. Is paint decor? Or is lighting? Is a ceiling fan decor? All the way to decor decor, where you get into things like wall art and whatnot. And so just to be clear, some of those categories we’ve been in for a long time, obviously take lighting or flooring. And then over time we have seen lots of opportunity into more adjacent categories. We know everyone that puts in a hardwood floor or any kind of hard surface floors, is probably going to be in the market for a rug. And if you paint the room and you put in new lighting, you may need new furniture as well.
Jordan Broggi:
So there have been some adjacent categories that we’ve really grown. And again, the website has allowed us to do that because we don’t have the same physical constraints that the store might have, in terms of bringing in new categories. And so we’ve seen some great growth in what we call online decor, again a loosely defined term for decor. But things like interior furniture and textiles, it has been really great.
Dean Wehrli:
So let’s talk about the 800 board foot gorilla in the housing market room right now, which is lumber, lumber shortage and lumber costs. What’s going on? What explains the explosion in lumber prices? Let’s start there.
Jordan Broggi:
Is supply and demand a good enough answer?
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah, but you have to tease that out a little bit. Come on. This is a podcast.
Jordan Broggi:
All right. So it really is econ 101. We’ve got some supply, some downward pressure on supply that happened with some of the supply chain disruptions we talked about, think about the mills and everything else taking production down. And then you’ve got demand up significantly, not just in our business for repair/remodel, but on the new home construction starts and everything as well. And so, lumber is a commodity and is certainly out of balance right now from a supply demand standpoint. We’ve seen prices double the past three months. So to make that real, you mentioned $800 as kind of the, I think that’s per whatever million-
Dean Wehrli:
I was making a joke, I mean 800 board foot gorilla.
Jordan Broggi:
Oh, 800 pound gorilla. Framing right now is 800 bucks.
Dean Wehrli:
Is it really? Wow.
Jordan Broggi:
That was probably 350 back in February or March. So to make that real, say a two by four at home Depot, might’ve been, I don’t know, $2.75 at the beginning of the year. And now it’s say $5.50. Or a sheet of OSB might’ve been nine bucks, now it’s 20 bucks. So it has been unlike anything we’ve seen, at least in the time that I’ve been with the company, this is way beyond what we’ve ever seen. And certainly, I know you do a lot of work on the new home construction side, for the builder it’s a really big challenge right now because it’s changing the cost of building a home mid-flight, pretty significantly.
Dean Wehrli:
It’s a huge concern, absolutely. And it should be. Is it getting too much in the geopolitical weeds to get a sense of why this is happening right now? Is the supply, is it political? Is it physical? The supply shortage I guess.
Jordan Broggi:
Well, I’m not sure what the political angle would be here. There’s been a little bit of tariff noise with US and Canada, but that’s been really small, to be honest. This is really just a question of demand is way up, supply went down. And back to our earlier conversation on inventory, lumber is a category that there’s not huge amounts of inventory that sit in the market. Lumber does get old, you can’t sit on it forever. And so it’s a high turning type of category for us, for distributors, and so there’s not a lot of lump … No one sits on six months worth of lumber inventory. And so when you have a supply demand imbalance that crops up, it’s very fast for prices to react because there’s not really a buffer.
Dean Wehrli:
Can’t you just, when it gets old then you can sell it as distressed, and someone can make it into a table to sell on Etsy?
Jordan Broggi:
Sure.
Dean Wehrli:
You’re welcome. You can use that.
Jordan Broggi:
I don’t know if there’s enough Etsy table demand to eat that kind of inventory.
Dean Wehrli:
That’s probably true. Beyond lumber though, has the pace of your growth there at Home Depot put a strain on all your supply chains? I’m guessing yes, but I want to ask.
Jordan Broggi:
We talked about at the beginning, our sales were up 25% in the most recent three months. If we walked into the year thinking that was going to be 4%, now it’s 25, there’s certainly some reactionary work that’s taking place. That’s for sure.
Dean Wehrli:
Let’s end with the economy. Because part of your job is to take a look at the economy and forecast and get a sense of where that’s heading. How do you do that now, in this COVID impacted world? Are there new indicators or different indicators that you’re looking at more than you maybe used to?
Jordan Broggi:
Yeah, it’s really tough, and I should say right here, although I’ve referenced our year to date sales growth, we as a company have pulled all of our forward-looking guidance, because really, we just don’t know. Economics is an art to begin with sometimes, as you and your John Burns team well know, and we’ve just got a real weird confluence of stuff right now.
Jordan Broggi:
GDP obviously contracted pretty significantly in the second quarter. Unemployment, depending on which metric you look at, it’s in the double digits, and you’re talking maybe 15 or 20 million jobs lost right now. And yet, incomes are actually up, I mentioned that earlier, because the lost wages are more than being offset by the supplemental unemployment benefits, as well as one-time stimulus checks that went out from the government.
Jordan Broggi:
So incomes are up, even though employment is down. Spending is actually down, even though incomes are up, and so the balance has gone to saving. And then within spend, the mix shift across sectors has just been unbelievable. I mean, really different than anything I’ve certainly ever seen. If you look at the Census Bureau and the retail sales data that they report, just in July, our sector was up about 15%, year over year. But clothing stores were down 20%, restaurants were down 20, sporting goods stores were up 18 or 20, gas stations were down 15. So the mix shift has just been enormous, and if you look back in April and May, those shifts were even larger.
Jordan Broggi:
So we’re just in this weird spot where GDP is contracting, unemployment’s way up, and yet our business is growing faster than ever. So it makes it really hard to take these metrics and create a forecast, and obviously a lot of it is, what do you believe is going to happen with the virus and getting it under control? Can all this government help tide things over and get everything back to normal?
Jordan Broggi:
Now, we certainly feel good that it doesn’t appear that there are really any big structural problems in the economy. You go back to the last recession, that was very different. A lot was revealed when things turned down, specifically in our sector, especially the banking side of housing. While we don’t think that’s the case this time, we still don’t know where things go from here. From a confidence standpoint, from an employment standpoint, we just don’t know.
Jordan Broggi:
But like I said earlier, what we do feel really good about is that the home is more important than ever. We came into this COVID era with good macro tailwinds to start. You look at, housing inventory was very tight. The housing stock is only getting older every year. Homeowner balance sheets are the best they’ve been in a long, long time with trillions of equity. So all of these things are favorable for our industry.
Jordan Broggi:
You add in coronavirus, making the home even more important, being used for more things, I mentioned that, school, work, entertaining, and it’s certainly a positive, at least within our sector of the broader economy. Now, what’s the broader economy going to do? That’s the tricky one, and I think the range of outcomes for the next 12 months are pretty wide.
Dean Wehrli:
Is there any one thing you worry about most in terms of the economy, say for the next year? Like for instance, the easing of government stimulus. Is that a concern for you folks?
Jordan Broggi:
I would say it’s less about stimulus, it’s more about employment and tiding over any shortfall. So I think of the stimulus less as stimulus for the sake of stimulus, but I think of it as I’ve got a massive employment problem that’s cropped up, I’m tiding that over with incremental support, which by the way has gotten held up now on the political side. I think what probably worries me is just, if you get to a spot where you can’t tide things over, you get into the natural downward business cycle of less employment means less income, less income means less spending, less spending means less employment, and whatnot. So ultimately the jobs have to come back, employment has to be there. And that’s certainly what we’re hopeful for.
Dean Wehrli:
So stimulus is sort of a bridge to get to that natural organic economy on the other side, and at least structurally, it looks like we’re holding up better than some folks thought?
Jordan Broggi:
For sure. So far it would appear to be that way. Certainly it seems the equity markets are betting on that, but I still think there’s a lot of uncertainty out there and we’ll have to see. Ultimately employment is what matters. You can’t print your way to a … You can’t print a bridge forever.
Dean Wehrli:
Let’s say on a more positive note, what makes you most optimistic about the near term economy?
Jordan Broggi:
I think confidence is a big part, and the fact that people coming out of the real lockdowns are spending money on their homes, are buying cars, are spending money. July we actually saw a retail sales slightly go positive again. That says a lot about confidence and the underlying psyche that we’re going to get through this, and so that’s probably what makes me the most optimistic. Again, we have to actually get through it, but I think a lot of consumers right now are betting that we will. And that as you know, to some extent can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dean Wehrli:
Definitely. Yeah. That’s great. Jordan, thank you. This has been eye-opening and actually an educational process for me. I’m mostly focused, as you mentioned, on the new home world, apartment world. This has been fascinating. I appreciate it.
Jordan Broggi:
Absolutely, Dean. Thanks for the work you guys do. We certainly enjoy your work and appreciate the partnership.
Dean Wehrli:
For sure. Awesome. This has been the New Home Insights podcast with Dean Wehrli, and my guest today, Jordan Broggi from Home Depot. Thanks for listening.
