Liveblogging Home Depot (HD)'s second quarter conference call

9:06 am - How they are progressing in 5 primary goals. Have been restructuring the way associates are being rewarded in an attempt to show commitment to the company's associates. Payout on success sharing is nearly 3 times the same level as this time last year. Have picked up considerable momentum in master trade program. Re-allocated resources to put more at regional levels. Merchandising has created 3 new Senior VP positions. Supply chain organization has brought in several new leaders. They are past the half way mark for planned store environment program plan. This has led to higher customer scores of the company's stores.

9:08 am - Had strong international performance in the quarter.

9:09 am - Call now going to Criag Meaner - VP Merchandsing. - Average ticket was down 2.8%. Part of this due to lumber prices. Company made progress during the quarter. Total transactions up 1.1%. Have seen flooring business market shares gains in the quarter. This is a main business segment that the company has been working on.

9:11 am - market share of paint sales grew during the quarter. this growth was supported by customer satisfaction campaign.

9:13 am - As customers expand homes into the back yard, patios and grill continue to be important segment. Company saw good gains in market share in this important segment. Also continued to add market share with the company's appliances business

9:15 am -Pleased with great performance over main holidays during the quarter.

9:16 am - Lost share in kitchen and mill work. They are updating products in both of these areas to help bring share numbers back up in the second half of the year

9:18 am - We can look to see several new items introduced during the second half of this year. Will see new products that will help to bring in both professional and non professional customers

now moving to Carol Tome to discuss financials

9:19 am - sales were 22.2 billion during the quarter .Consolidated store sales were -3.15% in May, -5.4% in June and -6.8% in July.

9:20 am - In he second quarter the company's gross margin was 33.1% - an increase of 0.09% from same period last year.

9:21 am - During the quarter, payrolls increased by 79 basis points over same period last year

9:22 am - Net interest expense in the quarter was $145 million, up $47 million from last year. Long term debt to equity was 43%, up from 25% last year.

9:24 am - Opened 33 new stores, taking total store count to 2,200 as of the end of the second quarter.

9:25 am - Inventory was down 4% from last year, Inventory turns were 4.6 times, slightly lower than last year. Ended the quarter with $56.9 billion in assets including $3 billion in cash and short term investments.

9:26 am - earnings from continued operations expected to fall 12 to 15% for fiscal 2007

moving to the question / answer portion - stock is still trading up 0.7% in premarket as we get ready for the opening bell

9:27 am Matthew at Goldman Sachs - what can we maybe expect to see regarding the recap strategy for sale of supply business? company remains devoted to looking into all recap strategies.

9:30 am - Bud @ Raymond James - looking at gross margin- if there was less promotional activity why was this not reflected in gross margin. Company was less aggressive in July, but was also aggressively moving product out that were not meeting standards that the company wanted to see, so the company was aggressively moving in new products (such as assembled cabinets)

9:33 am - Seth at Credit Suisse - what is estimate for margin for full year. Company still expects slight margin expansion for the full year 2007

9:35 am - Steve @ JP Morgan - Looking at the supply company. Supply looked down a little year over year. What were sales trend? Sales were down. Supply business is heavily leveraged to the home building market, and we all know what is going on in that market segment.

9:38 am - Collin @ Bernstein - Looking at core retail implementation.... fairly close to Canadian implementation, any changes in Canada? Core retail is going very well, Canada is in very heavy lifting phase at this time, still expect to pilot a couple more stores this year and roll out in 2008. When will they expect to have Canada completely switched over to SAP? During 2008.

9:41 am -Mike @ Deutsche Bank - More SG&A opportunity ahead? Always looking for opportunities to do things more effectively and more productively so will continue to work on that.

9:44 am - Parham @ Evergreen Investments - Company seems confident that they are going to be able to place a lot of debt. How are they planning on placing debt moving ahead? Its a tough market right now, they are looking at all the possibilities of raising capital, but be sure that they are still looking at all their options for the debt holders

9:49 am - Eric @ Cleveland Research - retail profit in first half looks down about 18%. Do they still think that it will be same in second half? since comparisons are easier in the second half, why should we expect to see same -18% level? Continue to see weakness in the housing market, third and fourth quarter should be more difficult than the first half so far this year.. .mainly in terms of sales.

9:52 am - Danielle Fox @ Merrill Lynch : what led to the sequential strength in transaction count? Very strong performance in garden and live goods. Very pleased with improvements in those areas that have been made in the stores.

and that brings today call to a close

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.