By Nandita Bose
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Home Depot Inc's second-quarter sales at established stores beat Wall Street forecasts, boosted by a rebound in demand for seasonal merchandise.
Shares of the No. 1 U.S. home improvement chain rose 2.4 percent to $198.8 in premarket trading on Tuesday.
This performance comes at a time when sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell to an eight-month low in June and data for the prior month was revised sharply lower, the latest indications that the housing market was slowing down.
Sales rebounded from the first quarter when cooler-than-usual weather in some parts of the country hit demand for spring-season products.
Home Depot said customer transactions rose 3.1 percent in the second quarter ended July 29.
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Sales at Home Depot stores open for more than a year climbed 8 percent, beating analysts' average estimate of a 6.65 percent rise, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Net earnings rose to $3.5 billion or $3.05 per share in the three months ended July 29, from $2.7 billion or $2.25 per share a year earlier. Analysts were expecting earnings of $2.84 per share.
Net sales rose 8.4 percent to $30.5 billion beating expectations of $30.03 billion
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in New York; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Jane Merriman)
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