Wall Street Strategies Comments On Lowe's (LOW)

Wall Street Strategies provided color on Lowe's LOW in a research report this morning, following Lowe's Q4 2010 earnings results. In the report, Wall Street Strategies states, "We believe that Lowe's deserves greater credit for its margin performance evident in 4Q10; gross margin expanded 60 bps year over year, far surpassing Home Depot's 24 bps of growth. Lowe's continues to implement pricing strategies throughout its store base (in hindsight, this may be resulting in the market share loss), giving it the luxury of being opportunistic on in demand product pricing. “Zone Pricing” as it's officially called is a reason why FY11 EBIT margin guidance of 30 bps (+40 bps expected from Home Depot) may prove conservative barring a meltdown in the encouraging trends in the home remodeling market. Combined with the utilization of the balance sheet on share repurchases and dividend increases and attractive valuation relative to Home Depot, we think no change to our Buy rating pre call is a worthwhile course of action." Shares of Lowe's were trading at $25.50 at the time of posting in pre-market trading, down 1.89% from Tuesday's market close.