Home Depot Buying Pro Supplier SRS Distribution

Well, Home Depot announcing today that it will be buying building materials company S. R. S. Distribution for more than $18 billion. The home improvement retailer is beefing up its professional services business as it makes a push to win over contractors, roofers and other building professionals. Bloomberg's John Edwards joins us now with more ends. I know Home Depot. I don't know S. R. S. Of course, that is a private company. What does Home Depot see there? They see an opportunity to really maximize their their presence in that professional market, which is so important to them. You know, they're already doing better than Lowe's. They're their main competitor. Uh, you know, Home Depot gets about 50% of its revenue from from professionals, and Lowe's gets about a quarter of its revenue there. So Home Depot just wants to build on that, that that that lead basically. And S. R. S. Is a big way to do it. You know, it's it's a huge player in roofing, also involved in, you know, materials for landscapers and pool contractors. So this is just another way for Home Depot to ramp up its exposure to that lucrative professional market. And it's good perspective, too, because you think Home Depot and often the conversation is about those D. I. Y. Renovators at home, but the professional side obviously hugely important to them. Let's talk about the price tag, because $18.25 billion. That is quite a chunk of change. But you take a look at Home Depot shares. They're only off about six tenths of a percent. It seems like the market may be okay with this. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's because it really confirms the trend and confirms what people want to see out of Home Depot, which is, you know, getting more exposure to that professional market. So, you know, even though we you know, when we think of Home Depot, we see the commercials and we think of, you know, going down and, you know, getting stuff, you know, in the carts. But what they're really focused on is those professionals who buy big ticket items and a lot of them all at once. And so that's that's why the market seems to like, you know, pretty well what it's seeing here.