Now that spring has sprung, millions of Americans are heading outdoors and tending to their lawns — and Lowe’s is poised to benefit, Wells Fargo wrote in a note Friday. While temperatures in the Northeast were essentially in-line with their historic averages in February and March, April is off to a better year-over-year start, analyst Zachary Fadem said. That sets the stage for an earlier spring. “We overlaid weather data against LOW’s pre-pandemic comps and the results were what we’d expect —Q1 comps tend to be ~200bps higher in years with above average temperatures,” he said. Fadem said the inflecting weather and weak sentiment could make Lowe’s “a ‘sneaky’ long.” LOW YTD mountain Lowe’s year-to-date performance Lowe’s also has roughly 20% of its first-quarter sales tied to lawn and garden, compared to the high teens for Home Depot , he pointed out. April traffic to date is already off to a solid start for the home-improvement retailer, improving 3.7 percentage points from the last week in March, Fadem said. In comparison, Home Depot saw a 2 percentage point improvement, he added. Shares of Lowe’s are up more than 1% year to date. — Michelle Fox
