Home Depot 2013 Annual Report Download - page 3

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Online, Pick-up In Store and Buy Online, Ship to Store services and have seen consistent improvement
in our related customer surveys. We are now expanding our existing store delivery program to include
Buy Online, Deliver From Store. And we have continued on the path of redirecting store hours from
tasking activity to customer service.
Our merchants have the responsibility of being the customer’s advocate for value. Their job is to
provide our customers products that make their home improvement projects or job site tasks simpler,
with an assortment of compelling values. To help with this job, over the past several years we have
been building the competencies we call collectively Merchandising Transformation. This effort has
focused on providing our merchants better tools for, among other things, forecasting and replenishment
and assortment and space allocation. The tools are largely in place, and we can begin to use them to
create additional value for our customers, associates and shareholders.
We have also begun the development of three new direct fulllment centers. These will support our
online channel. We opened the rst facility in the rst quarter of 2014, and we will complete the last by
the end of 2015. Our intent is for these facilities to provide us the ability to deliver 90 percent of our
customers’ parcel orders in the U.S. within two days.
Our shareholder return principles are straightforward and have not changed over the last several
years. We will invest to maintain and grow our business; we look to increase our dividend every
year, targeting a payout ratio of 50 percent of net earnings; and we will return excess cash to our
shareholders through share buy backs.
In scal 2013, we repurchased a total of $8.5 billion or 111 million shares of our outstanding stock. At
the end of scal 2013, we had $8.5 billion remaining under our current share repurchase authorization.
Since 2002, we have repurchased approximately 1.1 billion shares, returning more than $46 billion to
our shareholders. In early 2014, we announced a 21 percent increase in our quarterly dividend to $0.47
per share, or an annual dividend of $1.88 per share.
In 2014, we will continue on the path of gaining share and improving customer service, as we also
strive for improved nancial performance. I hope you will visit us often in our stores and online.
Francis S. Blake
March 27, 2014
PRODUCT AUTHORITY
2014
DISCIPLINED CAPITAL ALLOCATION