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Letter to
Sharholders

customers and associates. Our Board and Senior
Leadership Team are working together to support our
stores and the communities they serve, and we thank
our associates for their hard work and dedication to
taking care of our customers and each other.

Investing to Extend Distinct Competitive
Advantages
Our more than 400,000 orange-aproned associates
are our greatest asset and a true competitive
differentiator in the marketplace. The Company’s
culture and values promote ongoing investment in
our associates. We offer comprehensive benefits
geared towards helping associates through various
life experiences, competitive wages, as well as career
growth and development opportunities that make
working at The Home Depot a rewarding experience.
LETTER TO We create an engaging workplace for our associates
by frequently asking for and acting on associate
SHAREHOLDERS feedback. Recent enhancements to our parental
leave benefits, for example, are actionable steps
taken by the Company in response to direct associate
feedback. Our annual Voice of the Associate survey
helps us determine how emotionally connected our
Dear Shareholders: associates are to the Company, and we are pleased
Fiscal 2019 was an exciting year for The Home Depot that this survey shows, on average, four out of five
as we celebrated the 40th anniversary of our first store associates feel emotionally committed to The Home
opening and continued our multi-year, accelerated Depot. This level of engagement empowers our
investment program to create the One Home Depot associates to deliver exceptional customer service.
experience. One Home Depot is the full realization of
the interconnected, frictionless shopping experience In addition to our exceptional associates, we have
that we started developing years ago. It will enable our a premier real estate footprint with our stores serving
customers to seamlessly blend the digital and physical as the hub of our customer experience. We believe
worlds and was formulated using an entirely customer- the convenience of our locations provides us with
back approach. a structural advantage that is nearly impossible to
replicate. As a result, approximately 50 percent of
The Home Depot already has a number of distinct our investment dollars were targeted at leveraging
competitive advantages in place. Our investment the advantage we have with our convenient locations,
strategy builds on those advantages to create a addressing customer pain points to better deliver a
value proposition that we believe is unique and further great interconnected experience. Our store
extend our leadership position in the marketplace. To investments are on track, and the majority of our U.S.
achieve our One Home Depot vision, we are building stores have a new look and feel. We addressed our
additional interconnected capabilities that leverage customers’ number one issue, navigation, through our
our knowledgeable associates and the convenience of enhanced wayfinding sign and store refresh package,
our stores; further integrate our market-leading digital as well as an improved in-store mobile navigation
experience; expand our world-class merchandising experience. We are also improving the checkout
efforts; and further enhance the flexibility of our supply experience through investments in the front-end of our
chain to allow customers additional choice with stores. This includes an enhanced pickup experience
respect to fulfillment. for online orders fulfilled through our stores by
reconfiguring service desks and implementing pickup
And while this letter focuses primarily on fiscal 2019, lockers. Our store investments are driving higher
as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our focus today customer satisfaction scores, which we believe is
is on operating our business while taking care of our translating into market share gains.