HD is a buy; recent 30% drop and low P/E create fair value/margin of safety, though macro pressures persist short-term.

The reason I'm bringing up this topic in this video about "Home Depot" is that, of all the companies I follow , very few have handled all these circumstances so skillfully.

Home Depot is one of the management teams that handled all these unprecedented circumstances excellently. Not because the circumstances were favorable to the company, but because the way the company adapted to these circumstances was, in my opinion, top-notch.

Therefore, I give the management team credit, and this gives me greater confidence in the company when I see them dealing with the most difficult circumstances in nearly a century and handling them effectively.

This gives me confidence that if conditions were a little easier, imagine what this company could achieve.

This is what attracts me to "Home Depot", and I wanted to take a look at it. The company's stock fell by 30% during the past year. I wanted to take a look to see if there was an opportunity to buy now after this significant drop.

You can see that in Home Depot's chart here. Look at this boom in sales from $110 billion to $160 billion in about a year and a half.

Despite all of that, Home Depot's organic performance , excluding acquisitions and divestitures, was reasonably consistent. However, its profit margins did not perform as well as its sales.

And you can see that significant decrease in profitability here. Monitoring the decline in its profit margin from 15% to 12.4%, right?

Inflation and changing price levels are particularly bad for Home Depot because the company follows a policy of lowering prices first when prices fall for its customers, and then raising prices later when they rise.

Therefore, the volatility of input prices, as has been the case over the past few years, is particularly bad for Home Depot because they have a customer-friendly policy.

Its return on invested capital has also declined in recent years to 18.5%. Historically, the company has operated with returns on invested capital exceeding 20 to 25%, which is nearly double or more its weighted average cost of capital.

Even with this decrease to 18.5%, the return on invested capital remains significantly higher than the company's average cost of capital.

Management is also working to improve employee productivity and has assured investors that the AI-based productivity improvements it is using are not in a hurry to integrate many of them immediately.

They are rolling it out over a number of years because they see it as a sustainable opportunity and they see the technology constantly improving. So, while they are slowly integrating artificial intelligence, it allows them to take advantage of the latest technological improvements and also deliver a more stable change to the company's operations.

It is more difficult to change your processes radically than to change them gradually. This reduces the chance of a major mistake if you are integrating new technology gradually.

Therefore, I mentioned that the stock price decreased during the previous year. In fact, if we look at the chart for one year, we find that Home Depot stock has fallen by more than 29%.

Thus, this created a favorable valuation for Home Depot, which has been selling at its lowest prices for several years. Based on the price-to-earnings ratio , Home Depot stock is trading at 17.85, its lowest level in many years.

I also updated my Home Depot rating using the discounted cash flow model , and the stock appears to be fairly valued and within my margin of safety. I calculated an intrinsic value of 263.

The current market price is 286, which is approximately 8% different from my intrinsic value. This falls within my safety margin of between 5 and 10%.

Therefore, over the past year and a half to two years, I warned investors against buying Home Depot stock, and this assessment proved to be wise as the stock fell by approximately 30% during the previous year.

But now, when looking at Home Depot stock comprehensively, and when measuring the valuation comprehensively using multiple valuation metrics, it appears to be fairly valued or slightly undervalued .

Home Depot is one of the best companies in the world in terms of its competitive advantages, overall scalable market opportunity, and management effectiveness, as explained in the introduction.

So , this is one of those companies that I would feel comfortable buying at a fair value. I don't need this stock to be at a huge discount to motivate me to buy. I would be willing to buy it at a fair price, which is at or below the fair price when looking at the overall valuation.

Therefore, today I will upgrade Home Depot stock to a buy opportunity. This is the first time in two years that I have upgraded Home Depot stock.

Now, one of the risks of upgrading this rating is that it's a little too early. Business is still under pressure and the stock price is still under pressure. The macroeconomic headwinds remain very negative for Home Depot.

However, I think you can start allocating your Home Depot investment and using the average dollar cost over time, as macroeconomic conditions improve . Isn't that so? Currently, she's not getting better, is she?

Therefore , over the next three months, I would say that macroeconomic conditions are likely to continue to be challenging. Higher oil prices, lower disposable income for consumers, etc., will affect consumer spending and spending on home improvement.