Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG) reports second quarter fiscal 2026 results before the US market opens on Thursday, August 27, 2026, covering the 13 weeks ended July 31, 2026. Chief executive Todd Vasos and chief financial officer Donny Lau will host the call at 8:00 a.m. CT (9:00 a.m. ET), according to the company’s scheduling announcement issued on July 30.
The consensus bar is modest. Analysts polled ahead of the print expect roughly $11.19 billion in net sales and about $2.01 in diluted earnings per share. The more interesting number is one the company has explicitly declined to forecast: whatever it recovers from the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February.
In short
- Date and time: Dollar General reports Q2 fiscal 2026 on August 27, 2026, with a call at 9:00 a.m. ET hosted by CEO Todd Vasos and CFO Donny Lau.
- The bar: consensus sits near $11.19 billion in net sales and $2.01 in diluted EPS, against $10.7 billion and $1.86 in the year-ago quarter.
- The excluded number: full-year guidance of $7.20 to $7.45 in EPS explicitly “does not include any potential impact from tariff refund payments,” per the company’s own Q1 release.
- Peer context: Walmart booked about $2.9 billion, Target $994 million, Home Depot $730 million, Amazon roughly $600 million, TJX $331 million and Lowe’s $80 million in IEEPA refunds this reporting season.
- Why Dollar General’s number should be smaller: the retailer directly imported roughly 4% of purchases at cost as of its 2024 filing, so it is rarely the importer of record and rarely the party CBP pays.
What exactly is Dollar General reporting on August 27
The release covers the second quarter of fiscal 2026, a 13-week period ended July 31, 2026. Dollar General’s fiscal year runs to January 29, 2027, so this print marks the halfway mark of the guidance year the company set in March and revised upward in June.
The company confirmed the date in a webcast announcement dated July 30, 2026, naming Vasos and Lau as the hosts. A live webcast will run on the investor relations site, with a telephone replay available afterward. The format is unchanged from prior quarters: an 8-K exhibit with the press release, followed by the call an hour or so later.
That timing matters for anyone tracking the retail tape. Dollar General shares the morning with at least one other major print, and the sector read will be assembled from both. Investors comparing the discount channel against consumer electronics will note that Best Buy reports the same morning, giving the day an unusually clean split between staples demand and discretionary demand.
What the company has already committed to
Dollar General entered the quarter with a specific set of published targets. Net sales growth of approximately 3.7% to 4.2% for the full year. Same-store sales growth of approximately 2.2% to 2.7%. Diluted EPS of approximately $7.20 to $7.45. Capital expenditures of $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion. No share repurchases.
It also committed to roughly 4,730 real estate projects in fiscal 2026: about 450 new US stores, about 10 new stores in Mexico, roughly 2,000 remodels under Project Renovate, roughly 2,250 under Project Elevate, and about 20 relocations. Those are unusually specific operational commitments, and they give the August print a set of checkable milestones rather than a single earnings figure.
Why the tariff refund is the number that is not in the guidance
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president authority to impose tariffs of indefinite scope. The decision did not order refunds. It did establish that the duties had been collected without lawful authority, which under long-standing precedent makes them an illegal exaction the government may not retain.
What followed was an administrative scramble rather than a single payout. US Customs and Border Protection built an electronic refund channel; by early April, roughly 56,497 importers and notify parties had registered for it, and CBP indicated it could deliver electronic refunds for about 82% of entries that carried IEEPA duty payments or deposits. The remainder run through protests, which importers generally must file within 180 days of liquidation, and through renewed litigation at the Court of International Trade.
The practical result is that refunds have been arriving in lumps, at different times, for different retailers, and largely outside the guidance frameworks companies set before February. Dollar General’s Q1 release language is unusually blunt on this point. The guidance, it says, “assumes no share repurchases in fiscal 2026 and does not include any potential impact from tariff refund payments.”
Why the refund may not arrive on Dollar General’s schedule
Refund timing is governed by liquidation, not by the calendar quarter. An entry must liquidate before the protest clock starts, and importers generally have 180 days after liquidation to protest and request a refund from CBP. Entries filed at different times across 2025 and early 2026 therefore liquidate at different times, and refunds land in tranches.
CBP’s electronic channel covers about 82% of entries that carried IEEPA duty payments or deposits. The residual 18% is the slower pool, running through paper protests and, where CBP disputes the claim, through renewed proceedings at the Court of International Trade. Neither the Supreme Court decision nor the executive order revoking the tariffs addressed refunds directly, which left the mechanism to be assembled after the fact.
For a company with a comparatively small direct import base, that fragmentation matters. A retailer claiming across a handful of entry tranches can easily see its recovery straddle two or three reporting periods rather than landing as a single quarterly item. That is one plausible reason Dollar General has declined to guide to a figure at all.
How a refund actually lands on a retailer’s income statement
There is no single treatment, which is part of why the reporting season has been messy to read. Duties paid on imported merchandise are capitalized into inventory cost. When that inventory sells, the duty flows through cost of goods sold. A refund of those duties therefore tends to show up as a reduction in cost of goods sold, which inflates gross margin in the period it is recognized.
Home Depot illustrated the mechanic plainly this season, applying $685 million of its $730 million refund against cost of goods sold and using it to offset higher fuel, energy and materials expense. That is a margin benefit that does not repeat, sitting inside a line that investors normally read as operational.
The disclosure question is therefore as important as the amount. A retailer that names the figure and quantifies its basis-point contribution lets analysts strip it out. One that folds it silently into gross margin does not. This is a specific instance of a broader pattern, the profit growth decoupling from sales that has run through the 2026 reporting season, where non-merchandise items increasingly drive the earnings line.
What peers have already booked, and what it implies for scale
The second quarter reporting season produced the first broad set of disclosed IEEPA refund figures. The amounts and the stated uses varied widely, which tells you something about both import intensity and competitive positioning.
| Retailer | Disclosed IEEPA refund | Stated use of the money |
|---|---|---|
| Walmart | About $2.9 billion | More than 11,000 rollbacks in grocery and general merchandise |
| Target | $994 million | Margin support plus price cuts on over 10,000 items |
| Home Depot | $730 million | $685 million applied against cost of goods sold |
| Amazon | Roughly $600 million | Limited traceable customer refunds, remainder to lower prices |
| TJX | $331 million | Not separately earmarked in public commentary |
| Lowe’s | $80 million received so far | Under evaluation; further claims filed |
| Dillard’s | $37.2 million | Flowed through quarterly results |
| Dollar General | Not disclosed | Explicitly excluded from fiscal 2026 guidance |
Walmart’s disclosure was the most consequential, both for size and for framing. The company said the refund contributed roughly 750 basis points to second quarter operating income growth, lifting reported growth to 28.8%, and then it poured the $2.9 billion refund into price cuts rather than letting it settle into margin. CFO John David Rainey framed the deployment around categories where customers were already concentrating spend.
That decision sets a competitive reference point for every value retailer reporting afterward. If the largest player converts a windfall into shelf prices, the discounters below it inherit a pricing environment they did not choose.
Why the spread between peers is so wide
The variation is not random. It tracks how much of a retailer’s merchandise it imports under its own importer of record number. A company that buys directly from overseas factories pays the duty itself and is the party CBP repays. A company that buys from domestic vendors who import on their own account never paid the duty and has no refund claim.
Home improvement and off-price both skew heavily toward direct sourcing, which is why Home Depot and TJX landed in the hundreds of millions. Lowe’s smaller figure reflects timing rather than exposure; the company said further claims remain filed and outstanding.
How Dollar General’s import exposure differs from its larger peers
This is the structural reason to expect a modest number on August 27. Dollar General directly imported approximately 4% of its purchases, measured at cost, as of its 2024 annual filing. More recent company commentary has put direct imports in the mid to high single digits as a percentage of overall purchases, with indirect imports roughly double that.
Run the arithmetic on the disclosed figures. Fiscal 2025 net sales were $42.7 billion at a 30.7% gross margin, implying cost of goods sold of roughly $29.6 billion. A 4% direct import share puts directly imported merchandise near $1.2 billion at cost annually. Even at the higher end of company commentary, the directly imported base sits in the low single-digit billions.
That is the only pool on which Dollar General is the importer of record and therefore the party entitled to a refund. The indirect import base, which is roughly twice as large, was imported by vendors. Those vendors collect their own refunds.
| Sourcing channel | Who is importer of record | Who receives the IEEPA refund | Route back to Dollar General |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct import (roughly 4% of purchases at cost, per the 2024 filing) | Dollar General | Dollar General | Direct, through cost of goods sold |
| Indirect import via domestic vendors (roughly double the direct share) | The vendor | The vendor | Indirect, only through renegotiated cost |
| Domestically produced goods | Not applicable | No refund | None |
The second row is the more interesting story, and it is one the call is likely to touch. If vendors across the consumables supply chain are recovering duties, the question for a buyer of Dollar General’s scale is whether that recovery shows up in the next round of cost negotiations. That is a slower, quieter benefit than a headline refund, and it is harder to quantify, but across a $29.6 billion cost base it is potentially larger than anything CBP will wire directly.
What Dollar General said about tariffs before the ruling
The company’s posture through the tariff period was to absorb rather than pass through. Management indicated that tariffs would result in some price increases only as a last resort, and that it intended to minimize them as far as possible, with guidance built on offsetting a significant portion of the anticipated gross margin impact.
Alongside that, Dollar General has been diversifying its import origins, moving sourcing toward Southeast Asia, India, South America and Mexico. A substantial share of its imported merchandise nonetheless still originates in China, which is where the IEEPA duties bit hardest.
Both facts cut the same way for the August print. If the company genuinely absorbed most of the duty rather than passing it to shelf prices, then the refund, whatever its size, restores margin that was previously surrendered rather than delivering a windfall on top of prices customers already paid. That is a materially different position from a retailer that passed the duty through and now recovers it as well.
It is also why Amazon’s approach stood out this season. CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company had “identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we passed specific import charges on to customers,” and is refunding those customers directly. That traceability question applies to any retailer that itemized tariff surcharges, and far less to one that folded the cost into everyday shelf prices.
What the consensus bar looks like against recent quarters
Dollar General has beaten its own expectations for several consecutive quarters, which raises the bar for what counts as a good print. The trend in the underlying drivers is more informative than the headline.
| Metric | Q2 FY2025 (ended Aug 1, 2025) | Q1 FY2026 (ended May 1, 2026) | Q2 FY2026 consensus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | $10.7bn, up 5.1% | $10.8bn, up 3.4% | About $11.19bn |
| Same-store sales | Up 2.8% | Up 2.0% | Not separately forecast |
| Customer traffic | Up 1.5% | Up 1.4% | Not separately forecast |
| Average transaction | Up 1.2% | Up 0.5% | Not separately forecast |
| Gross margin | 31.3%, up 137bps | 31.6%, up 65bps | Not separately forecast |
| SG&A as % of sales | 25.8%, up 121bps | 25.7%, up 25bps | Not separately forecast |
| Operating profit | $595.4m, up 8.3% | $638.5m, up 10.8% | Not separately forecast |
| Diluted EPS | $1.86, up 9.4% | $2.00, up 12.4% | About $2.01 |
Two things stand out. First, the ticket line has decelerated sharply, from 1.2% growth a year ago to 0.5% in the first quarter. Traffic has held up. Customers are still coming, but they are spending less per visit, which is the classic signature of a stretched low-income household.
Second, the gross margin expansion is decelerating too, from 137 basis points in the year-ago quarter to 65 basis points in the first quarter of this year. The drivers have shifted. A year ago the story was lower shrink. In the first quarter it was higher inventory markups, with markdowns and transportation costs working against it.
What a beat would need to look like
Beating $2.01 by a few cents is not, on its own, informative this quarter. If the beat is driven by a tariff refund recognized in cost of goods sold, the operating quality is unchanged. Analysts will want the refund quantified so it can be separated from the underlying rate.
The cleaner signal is the composition of comparable sales. A print where the average transaction amount reaccelerates would suggest the core customer has stabilized. A print where traffic carries the quarter alone would suggest the opposite, whatever the EPS line does.
What the guidance math implies for the second half
Dollar General raised its full-year EPS range at the first quarter to $7.20 to $7.45, from $7.10 to $7.35. The mechanics of that raise were narrower than they looked. The company also cut its assumed effective tax rate to approximately 24.5% from approximately 25%.
| Guidance item | Set in March 2026 | Updated in June 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Net sales growth | 3.7% to 4.2% | Unchanged at 3.7% to 4.2% |
| Same-store sales growth | 2.2% to 2.7% | Unchanged at 2.2% to 2.7% |
| Diluted EPS | $7.10 to $7.35 | $7.20 to $7.45 |
| Assumed effective tax rate | About 25% | About 24.5% |
| Capital expenditures | $1.4bn to $1.5bn | Unchanged at $1.4bn to $1.5bn |
| Share repurchases | None assumed | None assumed |
| Tariff refund impact | Not addressed | Explicitly excluded |
Note what did not move. Sales and comparable sales guidance were reiterated, not raised, despite a first quarter that beat on earnings. Management chose to pass through the tax benefit and the earnings outperformance while leaving the topline assumption alone.
The tax credit drag that is already in the numbers
The original fiscal 2026 EPS guidance carried an explicit headwind: approximately $0.13 per share from the expiration of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit on December 31, 2025. That is a structural drag on a company that hires at scale into entry-level store roles, and it does not reverse.
Against a midpoint near $7.33, thirteen cents is roughly 1.8% of earnings. It is one reason the reported EPS growth trajectory understates the operating trajectory this year.
Why a guidance raise on August 27 is the harder call
The company has now reiterated its sales guidance twice. Raising it at the halfway mark would require confidence that the second half consumer holds, which is precisely the variable management has been most careful about.
The likelier shape, if the quarter is strong, is another EPS-only raise with the sales range untouched, and a refund figure disclosed separately so it can be excluded from the run rate.
Why the low-income consumer read matters more than the refund
Dollar General operates more than 20,000 stores, weighted heavily toward rural communities where it is often the only full-assortment retailer within a meaningful drive. That footprint makes its comparable sales one of the cleaner available reads on household budgets at the lower end of the income distribution.
The company’s own framing has emphasized this. Vasos described the business in the first quarter as positioned by “the essential nature of our offering and our expansive footprint” to navigate the current macroeconomic environment. That is a defensive framing, and it fits a quarter where ticket growth fell to 0.5%.
The SNAP variable running underneath the quarter
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are a direct input into consumables demand at value retail. With SNAP enrollment falling 13% and a stocking rule compliance deadline set for November 4, 2026, the channel faces both a demand headwind and a compliance cost in the same window.
The demand side is the immediate issue for the August print, since the quarter ran through July. The compliance side lands later, and is more likely to appear as commentary about the fourth quarter than as a number in this release.
Trade-down as an offsetting force
Working the other way is trade-down. Dollar General reported in prior quarters that it had been attracting higher-income shoppers, a pattern that historically strengthens when broader prices rise. Tariff-driven price increases across the general merchandise economy tend to push marginal shoppers toward value formats.
The tension between those two forces is what makes the comparable sales composition worth reading closely. Losing spend from core low-income customers while gaining trips from trading-down higher-income customers can produce flat comparable sales that conceal a substantial mix shift.
What the real estate programme signals about capital discipline
Dollar General is running one of the larger physical expansion programmes in US retail while explicitly forgoing buybacks. In fiscal 2025 it opened 581 new US stores and 8 in Mexico, remodeled 2,000 stores through Project Renovate and 2,254 through Project Elevate, and relocated 47.
The fiscal 2026 plan tilts further toward remodels and away from new units: roughly 450 new US stores against roughly 4,250 remodels. That is a deliberate reallocation of capital toward productivity in the existing base rather than square footage growth.
The first quarter ran roughly to plan, with 190 new US stores, 5 in Mexico, 659 Renovate remodels, 711 Elevate remodels and 6 relocations. Capital expenditures of $352 million annualize close to the guided $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion range.
Why no buybacks is the more revealing line
The company did not repurchase any shares in fiscal 2025 and has guided to none in fiscal 2026, while maintaining a quarterly dividend of $0.59 per share. Free cash flow is going into stores and into the balance sheet instead.
Net interest expense fell 26.9% year over year in the first quarter, to $47.2 million. That decline is the visible result of the deleveraging, and it is contributing meaningfully to EPS growth independent of operations.
What to watch on the call
Five things will determine how the print reads once the headline numbers clear.
- Whether a tariff refund figure is disclosed at all, and if so, whether management quantifies its basis-point contribution to gross margin so it can be stripped out.
- The traffic and ticket split within comparable sales, which is the cleanest available read on whether the low-income consumer has stabilized.
- Any commentary on vendor cost negotiations, specifically whether suppliers recovering their own IEEPA duties are passing that recovery through to Dollar General’s cost of goods.
- Whether the sales and comparable sales guidance moves, after two consecutive reiterations.
- Second-half commentary on SNAP and the November stocking deadline, which affects both demand and compliance cost in the fourth quarter.
The refund question in particular has become a standard feature of the value-retail earnings script this season. BJ’s Wholesale faced the same question in August, and the pattern of answers is starting to differentiate companies that treat the windfall as margin from those that treat it as price investment.
What this means for suppliers and marketplace sellers
For vendors selling into the value channel, the operative issue is not Dollar General’s refund. It is their own. Any supplier that acted as importer of record on IEEPA-covered entries has a claim, and the electronic refund channel has been processing a substantial majority of eligible entries.
The commercial risk is that recovery becomes visible to buyers. A retailer with a $29.6 billion cost base and detailed customs data on its own direct imports can reasonably infer which vendor categories recovered duties, and can open cost conversations accordingly.
Suppliers should expect the question and should know their own numbers before the buyer does. Documenting which entries were covered, which were liquidated, and which refunds have actually been received puts a vendor in a position to negotiate from fact rather than from a buyer’s estimate.
For sellers watching pricing more broadly, Walmart’s decision to convert its refund into more than 11,000 rollbacks is the more immediate competitive fact. Price investment funded by a one-time recovery is still price investment, and it resets the shelf regardless of how it was funded.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly does Dollar General report Q2 fiscal 2026 earnings?
Before the US market opens on Thursday, August 27, 2026, covering the 13 weeks ended July 31, 2026. The conference call follows at 8:00 a.m. CT, which is 9:00 a.m. ET, hosted by CEO Todd Vasos and CFO Donny Lau. A live webcast runs on the company’s investor relations site.
What are analysts expecting?
Consensus sits at approximately $11.19 billion in net sales and around $2.01 in diluted earnings per share. The year-ago quarter delivered $10.7 billion and $1.86, so the consensus implies roughly 4.6% sales growth and about 8% EPS growth.
Will Dollar General report a tariff refund?
The company has not said. Its fiscal 2026 guidance explicitly states that it “does not include any potential impact from tariff refund payments,” which means any refund recognized in the quarter would sit outside the guided range rather than inside it.
Why would Dollar General’s refund be smaller than Walmart’s or Target’s?
Because it imports far less directly. Dollar General directly imported roughly 4% of purchases at cost as of its 2024 filing, with indirect imports roughly double that. Only the direct portion makes the company the importer of record, and only the importer of record can claim a refund from CBP.
What was the Supreme Court ruling that triggered these refunds?
On February 20, 2026, the Court held 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs of indefinite scope. The ruling did not itself order refunds, but it established that the duties were collected without lawful authority, opening the door to refund claims.
How does a tariff refund show up in reported results?
Duties are capitalized into inventory cost and flow through cost of goods sold as that inventory sells. A refund therefore typically reduces cost of goods sold and inflates gross margin in the period it is recognized. Home Depot applied $685 million of its $730 million refund exactly this way.
What is the most important number in the release apart from EPS?
The split of comparable sales between customer traffic and average transaction amount. Ticket growth decelerated from 1.2% a year ago to 0.5% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, which is the clearest signal of pressure on the core low-income customer.
Is Dollar General likely to raise full-year guidance?
An EPS-only raise is more plausible than a sales raise. The company reiterated its 3.7% to 4.2% net sales growth and 2.2% to 2.7% comparable sales ranges at the first quarter while lifting EPS guidance to $7.20 to $7.45, partly on a lower assumed tax rate of about 24.5%.
What headwinds are already baked into fiscal 2026 guidance?
The expiration of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit on December 31, 2025 carries an approximately $0.13 per share drag, roughly 1.8% of the guidance midpoint. Guidance also assumes no share repurchases, so there is no buyback contribution to per-share growth.