Home Depot (NYSE:HD)’s Latest Brush With Security Breach

A 14% increase in the third quarter earnings of Home Depot (NYSE:HD) was seen as the customers focused more on do it yourself projects, having not being effected the massive credit card breach the company faced recently. Home Depot (NYSE:HD) being one of the largest home improvement retail group in the world, kept up its ever rising profits as a $1.54 billion profit was recorded for this time of the year with the share price of $1.15. The profits have increased this year as last year during the same quarter the company made profit of $1.35 billion and share price was 95 cent.

As shares prices had seen a decline to 79 cents, falling at .8% on the trading Tuesday, bringing the net total to $97.24. This came at a time when Wall Street was looking for a lower share price $1.13, bringing the net revenue to $20.47 billion. Frank Blake, who was the former Chief Executive of Home Depot (NYSE:HD) was succeeded by Craig Menear at the start of November. An overall increase in sales prices was seen in the stores all over US, in the yearly quarter ending Nov. 2. An increase in sales was seen up to 5.8%. In addition, increase of the profits by 5.2 % was seen in same store sales. Also, increase in consumer purchases rose by 3.2 % and a 2.3 % increase in average ticket was also observed.

Hackers using a third party’s vendor credentials, gained access to company’s network system. Up to 56 million credit and debit cards and customers’ info and email addresses had been accessed due to the breach. But earlier this month, the company informed that another 53 million emails had been compromised due to the breach.

Home Depot (NYSE:HD) assured customers PIN numbers remained safe and any fraudulent charges would be covered. The retailer also offered credit monitoring and identity protections services free of charge. On Tuesday’s conference call, Menear said Home Depot (NYSE:HD) will continue to implement enhanced security measures.

While explaining the security measures taken by the company, Menear explained during the conference call that credit monitoring and identity protection services were being offered to the customers free of charge.

Expenses of $28 million, inclusive of the taxes were recorded by the company which were a result of the data breach problem faced by the company in the third quarter of the year.

In 2014 fiscal year the expenses like reimbursements for fraudulent purchases were not included in the expenses, as the company stated that they hadn’t been able to estimate the costs yet.

Home Depot (NYSE:HD) confirmed that a fiscal growth of 4.8% was forecasted by the company and the shares on earnings were recorded as approx. $4.54.

Through the latest quarter of the year, the retail group has already purchased $5.74 billion shares back. The retailer plans to buy $1.26 billion worth of shares back as well during the fourth quarter. The quarterly earnings of the Lowes chain of groups (LOW) will be reported on Wednesday.