The Home Depot said on Wednesday that chair, president and chief executive Ted Decker has begun a temporary medical leave of absence, handing day-to-day control of the world’s largest home improvement retailer to two long-serving executives six days before the company reports second quarter results.
The announcement, made in a company press release and disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission in an 8-K filing, gives senior executive vice president Ann-Marie Campbell oversight of daily operations and gives executive vice president and chief financial officer Richard McPhail oversight of financial management and the company’s Pro subsidiaries. Independent lead director Greg Brenneman will chair the board while Decker is away.
Home Depot said it expects Decker to return within the next few months. It did not disclose the nature of his condition. The retailer is scheduled to publish fiscal second quarter results before the market opens on Tuesday, August 18, with a conference call at 9 a.m. Eastern.
In short
- Ted Decker, chair, president and CEO of The Home Depot, has started a temporary medical leave the company expects to last a few months.
- Ann-Marie Campbell (senior EVP) takes oversight of day-to-day operations; Richard McPhail (EVP and CFO) takes oversight of financial management and the Pro subsidiaries.
- Greg Brenneman, independent lead director, chairs the board for the duration of the leave. No permanent succession process was announced.
- The timing is the story: Q2 results land on August 18, the first major disclosure under interim management, with Lowe’s reporting the following morning.
- Home Depot reaffirmed fiscal 2026 guidance in May (comparable sales flat to plus 2%), so any change to that framing on August 18 will be read through the leadership lens.
What Home Depot actually announced
The release is short and unusually specific about division of labor. Decker steps back from all three of his roles for the duration of the leave. Rather than name a single acting CEO, the board split the office of the CEO in two, with Campbell responsible for operations and McPhail responsible for finance and the Pro subsidiaries.
That structure is a deliberate signal. A single acting CEO title would invite reading the appointment as an audition for permanent succession. Splitting oversight between an operator and a finance chief frames the arrangement as caretaking rather than transition.
Brenneman, who has served as independent lead director, said in the release that “The Home Depot has the best management team in retail” and that “both Ann-Marie and Richard are strong, seasoned executives who have worked together for more than 20 years.” That length of shared tenure is the load-bearing claim in the announcement: the company is arguing that the handover requires no learning curve.
Home Depot did not update guidance, did not pre-announce quarterly figures, and did not describe any change to strategy. Everything material about the business, in the company’s telling, is unchanged. The only variable is who signs off on decisions for the next few months.
The scale of what changes hands
At the end of the first quarter, Home Depot operated 2,361 retail stores plus more than 1,280 SRS Distribution locations across all 50 US states and international markets, employing over 470,000 associates. That footprint spans three national markets (the United States, Canada and Mexico) and two structurally different businesses: a big-box retail chain and a branch-based distribution network selling roofing, pool and landscape supply to trade customers.
Running those two businesses under one interim arrangement is not a formality. The retail chain is a comparable-sales machine driven by store traffic, ticket size and seasonal categories. SRS is a distribution business driven by branch economics, contractor relationships and, in roofing specifically, storm activity. They respond to different signals and are measured on different metrics.
Who is running Home Depot now
The two names on the release are among the most experienced operators in US retail, which is the point the board is making.
Ann-Marie Campbell, senior executive vice president
Campbell joined Home Depot in 1985 as a cashier in South Florida and has spent more than 40 years at the company. She has held roles including store manager, district manager and regional vice president, and later served as vice president of operations, vice president of merchandising and special orders, and president of the company’s Southern Division.
She was named senior executive vice president effective November 1, 2023. In that role she assumed responsibility for outside Pro sales efforts and the installation services business while continuing to oversee US stores and operations, The Home Depot Canada and The Home Depot Mexico. Campbell holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and an MBA from Georgia State University.
Her portfolio already covered the operating core of the company. The leave arrangement does not so much expand her remit as formalize her authority over it, which is why the transition can plausibly be described as low-friction.
Richard McPhail, executive vice president and chief financial officer
McPhail carries the financial half of the interim structure plus oversight of the Pro subsidiaries, which places SRS Distribution under the CFO rather than under the retail operator. That is a defensible split given SRS is a wholesale distribution asset with its own P&L dynamics, but it also concentrates the company’s most closely watched growth story under the executive who will be fronting the August 18 earnings call.
The pattern is not unique to Home Depot. Across the sector, finance chiefs have been pulled into broader operating remits as boards look for continuity and cost discipline at the same time, a dynamic shopappy has covered in its reporting on CFOs pulled into turnaround roles across brand-led retail.
The board’s role during the leave
Brenneman chairing the board while Decker is out separates board leadership from executive leadership, at least temporarily. Home Depot’s governance normally combines the chair and CEO roles in one person. The leave splits them, which is the arrangement most governance specialists prefer in any case.
Whether that split survives Decker’s return is an open question the company did not address. Boards that experience an unplanned separation of chair and CEO roles sometimes keep it, particularly when institutional investors have previously pushed for an independent chair.
Why the timing matters more than the announcement
A medical leave at a large public company is, in isolation, a governance item rather than a business event. What makes this one consequential is the calendar. Home Depot reports second quarter fiscal 2026 results on August 18, six days after the announcement, and the call will be the first substantive financial disclosure under interim management.
Earnings calls are where guidance is set, revised or defended. Analysts will be listening not only for the numbers but for whether the interim structure changes the company’s willingness to commit to a full-year outlook. A management team in caretaker mode has an incentive to avoid bold revisions in either direction, which can itself read as a signal.
The sequencing also compresses the news cycle. Home Depot reports Tuesday morning; Lowe’s reports Wednesday morning. Investors will get a clean read on the home improvement category within 24 hours, with one of the two participants operating under interim leadership. Any gap in comparable sales or Pro commentary between the two will be attributed, fairly or not, partly to the leadership situation.
What the Street expects on August 18
Consensus estimates compiled ahead of the print put revenue at roughly $47.5 billion and earnings per share at about $4.71 to $4.73, against $4.68 a year earlier. That is a low-growth expectation by design: the category has been flat for several quarters, and the company’s own guidance implied only modest improvement.
In May, Home Depot reaffirmed fiscal 2026 guidance of comparable sales flat to plus 2%, total sales growth of approximately 2.5% to 4.5%, adjusted operating margin of roughly 12.8% to 13.0%, and diluted and adjusted diluted EPS both roughly flat to plus 4% versus fiscal 2025. Reaffirming that framework on August 18 would be the least eventful outcome. Trimming it under interim management would be the most.
What the first quarter numbers say about the underlying business
The most useful context for August 18 is what the company reported three months earlier, because it defines the baseline the interim team inherits.
| Metric | Q1 fiscal 2026 | Q1 fiscal 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | $41.77bn | $39.86bn | +4.8% |
| Total comparable sales | +0.6% | n/a | Positive, low single digit |
| US comparable sales | +0.4% | n/a | Below total company |
| FX contribution to comps | ~55 basis points | n/a | Flattering the headline |
| SRS Distribution sales | ~$4.0bn | n/a | Positive total and organic growth |
| Retail store count | 2,361 | n/a | Plus 1,280+ SRS locations |
Three things stand out. First, headline sales growth of 4.8% is substantially acquisition-assisted; SRS contributes a large share of the increase, and organic growth in the core retail chain runs much closer to flat. Second, US comparable sales at plus 0.4% trailed total company comps, meaning international and currency effects flattered the number. Third, foreign exchange added roughly 55 basis points to total comps, which is not a repeatable source of growth.
Underneath that, the mix was more encouraging than the headline. Pro comparable sales were positive and outperformed the do-it-yourself segment, with management pointing to complex, larger-project purchases as the strongest part of the Pro business. That matters because Pro is where Home Depot has concentrated its capital and its acquisitions.
The soft spot: roofing and storm activity
Inside SRS, roofing was the weak link, posting low single digit negative comparable sales. Management attributed the softness to an industry-wide collapse in hail and hurricane activity beginning in the second half of 2025. Storm-driven roof replacement is a meaningful demand driver for roofing distribution, and its absence is not something a management team can fix operationally.
For the year, the company has guided SRS to mid single digit percent organic sales growth. Holding that number requires either a recovery in storm-related demand or strength in the pool and landscape verticals sufficient to offset roofing. Whether the interim team reaffirms that specific SRS target on August 18 is one of the more revealing details to watch.
How the market reacted
Home Depot shares fell roughly 2.5% in Wednesday morning trading following the announcement, according to market reports. Bloomberg reported that the leave is expected to last for months, a framing that gives the interim arrangement more weight than a brief absence would.
The decline arrived on a stock already under pressure. Home Depot has shed roughly 14% over the past year and trades well below its 52-week high of $426.75, according to market data cited in coverage of the announcement. In that context, a 2.5% move reads less as panic and more as the market pricing an additional layer of uncertainty onto an existing derating.
What analysts are actually worried about
The concerns raised in early coverage cluster around three points. The first is duration: “within the next few months” is a range, not a date, and an extended absence would eventually force the board to address permanent succession. The second is decision velocity: a dual interim structure can slow choices that require trade-offs between operating and financial priorities, which is precisely the kind of decision the Pro and SRS expansion generates. The third is the earnings print itself, where any softness in guidance could be amplified by the leadership overhang.
None of these are new risks. They are existing risks with a new coefficient. The company’s answer, embedded in Brenneman’s statement, is that Campbell and McPhail have worked together for more than 20 years and therefore do not need to negotiate their way to a shared view.
Why the reaction was measured rather than severe
A 2.5% move on a CEO leave at a company of Home Depot’s size is a mild reaction by historical standards, and the reasons are instructive. The leave is described as temporary with an expected return. The replacements are internal, long-tenured and already responsible for the functions they are taking over. No guidance was withdrawn.
Compare that with an abrupt departure, which typically triggers a larger move because it carries three simultaneous unknowns: why the executive left, who will replace them, and what the departure implies about results that have not yet been reported. A medical leave with a stated expectation of return removes two of those three.
What remains is the third, and it resolves on August 18. That is why the market’s positioning ahead of the print matters more than Wednesday’s move. Investors are effectively holding a position through an earnings event with a modified disclosure structure and no ability to price the leadership variable until the call happens.
Home Depot and Lowe’s into earnings week
The cleanest way to read Home Depot’s August 18 print is against Lowe’s on August 19. Both companies are running similar plays: defend a flat core, buy growth in professional and building-products distribution, and lean on digital and services.
| The Home Depot | Lowe’s | |
|---|---|---|
| Q2 fiscal 2026 report date | Tuesday, August 18 (pre-market) | Wednesday, August 19 (call 9 a.m. ET) |
| Q1 fiscal 2026 comparable sales | +0.6% total, +0.4% US | +0.6% |
| Distribution acquisition | SRS Distribution (roofing, pool, landscape) | Foundation Building Materials, Artisan Design Group |
| Q1 acquisition-related expense | Not separately highlighted | $96m pre-tax (FBM and ADG) |
| Reported digital signal | Pro comps outperforming DIY | Online sales +15.5% |
| Leadership status into the print | Interim (CEO on medical leave) | Stable |
The symmetry in comparable sales is striking: both chains posted plus 0.6% in the first quarter. That tells you the category, not execution, is the binding constraint. Neither company is meaningfully taking share from the other; both are waiting for the same macro unlock, which is a housing market where existing-home turnover and rate-sensitive project spending recover together.
Lowe’s has framed its core customer as a resilient, high-income homeowner while acknowledging that consumer sentiment for discretionary big-ticket items remains weak. That is the same tension Home Depot has described from the other side, with Pro strength offsetting DIY hesitancy.
Why the distribution bets converge
Both retailers concluded that the growth they cannot get from same-store sales must come from selling to the trade through branch networks rather than through stores. Home Depot bought SRS; Lowe’s bought Foundation Building Materials and Artisan Design Group. The strategic logic is identical: capture a larger share of the professional contractor’s wallet at the point where materials are specified rather than where they are picked up.
That convergence raises the stakes for integration quality, and integration quality is exactly what suffers when senior attention is diverted. Placing the Pro subsidiaries under McPhail during the leave is the company’s attempt to prevent that, but it also means the integration now reports to the executive with the least operational bandwidth during earnings season.
The policy backdrop: tariffs, lumber and building materials
Home improvement retail is unusually exposed to trade policy because its cost of goods is concentrated in commodities that cross borders: lumber, steel, aluminum, copper, and finished goods sourced from Asia. The interim team inherits a live tariff environment rather than a settled one.
The most immediate item is the schedule of US duties on Canadian goods, with a 50% rate on covered Canadian imports taking effect on August 19, one day after Home Depot reports. shopappy has examined what the 50% tariffs on Canadian goods mean for retailers with cross-border cost bases, and building materials sit near the center of that exposure.
Section 232 duties on steel, aluminum and copper were modified by proclamation earlier in 2026, with adjustments to how customs value is calculated. Separately, a 15% Section 232 tariff on polysilicon and derivative solar products was announced in August 2026 with an effective date of December 4, 2026, which touches the solar and outdoor power categories both chains have been building out.
The de minimis question no longer applies the way it did
The $800 de minimis exemption is gone for all countries of origin, suspended indefinitely by a regulation effective June 24, 2026, with statutory repeal following on July 1, 2027. For big-box retailers that import at commercial scale, this was never the primary channel, but it removes a cost advantage that smaller online competitors used to undercut store pricing on accessories, tools and parts.
The offsetting item is refunds. CNBC has reported that US importers are collectively owed more than $160 billion in tariff refunds following a February Supreme Court decision, with Walmart due roughly $10.2 billion and Target roughly $2.2 billion. Any commentary from McPhail on Home Depot’s refund position would be materially interesting, and it is the kind of disclosure a CFO fronting a call is more likely to address directly than an operator would be.
What interim leadership means in practice
The practical effect of a caretaker structure is rarely visible in the quarter it begins. It shows up in the decisions that get deferred.
Vendor negotiations, category resets, capital allocation on new SRS branches and any further acquisition activity are the areas where a temporary leadership arrangement typically slows down. None of that would be disclosed. It would surface a quarter or two later as a gap in the growth algorithm.
For suppliers, the near-term read is continuity. Campbell has overseen US stores and operations for years, and merchandising relationships run through structures she already controls. For Pro customers and contractors buying through SRS branches, the reporting line has changed at the top but not at the branch, and service levels are set locally.
The labor and cost picture heading into the fourth quarter
The leave also lands ahead of seasonal hiring decisions. Home improvement is less holiday-dependent than general merchandise, but it still staffs up for the autumn project season and, in northern markets, for winter categories. Broader retail is entering a period where seasonal headcount is being weighed against automation spend, a shift that has pushed seasonal headcount plans across the sector toward the low end of recent ranges.
Interim managers are structurally reluctant to make step-changes in labor models. That argues for a conservative, prior-year-shaped hiring plan at Home Depot this autumn, which is neither a positive nor a negative signal so much as an absence of one.
Where deferred decisions would actually show up
The mechanics are worth spelling out because “slower decisions” is an easy phrase to write and a hard one to observe. In a chain of this size, the decisions most sensitive to a leadership gap are the ones that require someone to accept a near-term margin cost for a multi-year return.
New SRS branch openings are the clearest example. Each branch carries upfront inventory, a lease and a hiring commitment, and pays back over years. A caretaker structure has every incentive to hold the current opening cadence rather than accelerate it, because acceleration is visible in this year’s expenses and invisible in this year’s revenue.
Category resets are the second. Resetting an aisle across 2,361 stores means renegotiating with vendors, absorbing markdowns on exiting inventory and accepting a period of disrupted comparable sales. Those are exactly the trade-offs an executive expects to defend to a permanent CEO, not to an interim structure that may be dissolved before the reset completes.
Acquisitions are the third and most consequential. Home Depot’s growth algorithm now depends on buying distribution capacity. A board is unlikely to approve a large transaction while its chief executive is on medical leave, which effectively pauses the fastest lever the company has.
How this compares with recent retail leadership events
The retail sector has had an unusually dense run of executive changes in 2026, though most have been planned successions or newly created roles rather than unplanned absences. Boards have been adding functional leadership at pace, including a wave of chief AI officer appointments concentrated ahead of the 2026 holiday season.
What separates the Home Depot situation is that it is involuntary and open-ended. A planned succession comes with a date, a named successor and a transition plan. A medical leave comes with none of those, and the company has been explicit that Decker is expected back.
The nearest analogue in the current earnings cycle is the pattern of guidance behavior around leadership uncertainty. When Tractor Supply cut its 2026 outlook after a second quarter miss, the market punished the guidance change rather than the miss itself. That is the risk shape for Home Depot on August 18: the number matters less than what the interim team says about the rest of the year.
What to watch on and after August 18
Five specific items will determine how this story reads a week from now.
- Who speaks on the call. If McPhail runs the call alone, the interim structure is finance-led. If Campbell participates substantively on operations, the split is real rather than nominal.
- Whether full-year guidance is reaffirmed. The May framework (comps flat to plus 2%, total sales growth 2.5% to 4.5%, adjusted operating margin 12.8% to 13.0%) is the benchmark.
- The SRS organic growth target. Mid single digit percent organic growth for the year requires roofing to stop deteriorating. Any softening of that language is a real change.
- US comparable sales versus total comps. A repeat of the first quarter pattern, where FX flattered the headline, would suggest the domestic core is still flat.
- Any update on the duration of the leave. The company said a few months. A more precise date, or a refusal to give one, will move the governance conversation.
Consumer demand itself is not the immediate variable. US retail spending broadly has held up better than sentiment surveys implied, with a summer stretch in which US retail spending hit a four-year high. The problem for home improvement has been specific to housing turnover and large-project financing rather than to the consumer’s overall willingness to spend.
The full announcement is available on the company’s investor relations site.
The Home Depot investor relations announcement
Frequently asked questions
Who is running The Home Depot while Ted Decker is on leave?
The board split the office of the CEO. Ann-Marie Campbell, senior executive vice president, oversees day-to-day operations. Richard McPhail, executive vice president and chief financial officer, oversees financial management and the company’s Pro subsidiaries. Independent lead director Greg Brenneman chairs the board during the leave. No acting CEO title was created.
How long will the medical leave last?
Home Depot said it expects Decker to return within the next few months. Bloomberg reported the leave is expected to last for months. The company has not given a specific return date and has not disclosed the nature of the medical condition.
Does this mean Home Depot is starting a CEO succession process?
No succession process was announced. The company framed the arrangement as temporary and said it expects Decker to return. Splitting oversight between an operator and a finance chief, rather than naming a single acting CEO, is consistent with a caretaker structure rather than a succession audition.
When does Home Depot report second quarter results?
Home Depot reports fiscal second quarter 2026 results before the market opens on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, with a conference call at 9 a.m. Eastern. It will be the first significant financial disclosure under the interim structure. Lowe’s reports the following morning, August 19.
What are analysts expecting for the quarter?
Consensus estimates put revenue at roughly $47.5 billion and earnings per share at about $4.71 to $4.73, versus $4.68 in the same quarter a year earlier. The company’s reaffirmed full-year guidance calls for comparable sales flat to plus 2% and total sales growth of approximately 2.5% to 4.5%.
How did Home Depot stock react?
Shares fell roughly 2.5% in Wednesday morning trading after the announcement, according to market reports. The stock had already declined roughly 14% over the previous year and trades well below its 52-week high of $426.75.
What is SRS Distribution and why does it matter here?
SRS Distribution is the roofing, pool and landscape supply distributor Home Depot acquired to expand its professional business. It operated more than 1,280 locations at the end of the first quarter and delivered roughly $4.0 billion of sales in that quarter. During the leave it reports through the CFO, which places the company’s main growth engine under the executive fronting the earnings call.
How exposed is Home Depot to current tariff policy?
Materially, because its cost of goods is concentrated in lumber, steel, aluminum, copper and imported finished goods. A 50% US tariff rate on covered Canadian goods takes effect on August 19, one day after the earnings report. Section 232 duties on steel, aluminum and copper were modified earlier in 2026, and a 15% Section 232 tariff on polysilicon and derivative solar products takes effect on December 4, 2026.
Does an interim structure change anything for suppliers and Pro customers?
Not immediately. Campbell already oversaw US stores and operations, so merchandising and vendor relationships run through structures she controls. Branch-level service for Pro customers is set locally. The effects of caretaker leadership usually show up later, in deferred capital allocation, slower category resets and reduced appetite for new acquisitions.