Inventory Turnover › Lowe's
Lowe's Inventory Turnover: Multi-Year 10-K History
Lowe's Companies Inc (LOW) reported 3.3x inventory turnover in fiscal 2025 (year ended January 30, 2026), holding in the low-3x band it has run since FY23. The structural gap to Home Depot (4.5x in FY25) reflects Lowe's DIY-heavy customer mix, the mirror image of Home Depot's Pro strategy. Source: Lowe's 10-K filings on SEC EDGAR.
FY21 - FY25 turnover history
| Fiscal Year | COGS | Inv (start) | Inv (end) | Turnover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY21 (ended Jan 2022) | $64.19B | $16.19B | $17.61B | 3.8x |
| FY22 (ended Feb 2023) | $64.80B | $17.61B | $18.53B | 3.6x |
| FY23 (ended Feb 2024) | $57.53B | $18.53B | $16.89B | 3.2x |
| FY24 (ended Jan 2025) | $55.80B | $16.89B | $17.41B | 3.3x |
| FY25 (ended Jan 2026) | $57.40B | $17.41B | $17.30B | 3.3x |
Turnover = COGS / average inventory, where average inventory is the mean of the year's opening and closing balance-sheet inventory. COGS and inventory taken directly from Lowe's 10-K filings (Lowe's tags COGS as Cost of Goods and Services Sold in its XBRL). FY22 was a 53-week fiscal year.
Lowe's vs Home Depot: the structural turn gap
Lowe's and Home Depot are operationally near-twins on store format, footprint and category structure. The persistent turnover gap (3.3x vs 4.5x in FY25) is a measurable result of who walks through the door:
- DIY-heavy mix. Lowe's runs roughly 75-80% DIY, with the Pro customer around 20-25% of sales. Home Depot is closer to 50% Pro. DIY shoppers buy smaller baskets less frequently, so individual SKU exit velocity is lower and stock sits longer.
- Fewer pallet-quantity buys. The Pro contractor who buys in pallet quantities is the single biggest accelerant of turnover in home improvement. Lowe's thinner Pro base means less of that high-velocity volume per square foot of shelf.
- Pro growth is the stated lever. Lowe's has made Pro penetration its explicit growth priority, reporting U.S. Pro penetration above 23% in fiscal 2025 (up more than 500 basis points since 2019). Closing the turnover gap to Home Depot runs through that mix shift.
The roughly 1.2-turn gap means Home Depot cycles its stock materially faster than Lowe's for the same balance-sheet investment. On Lowe's roughly $17B average inventory, each additional turn would run about $17B more COGS through the same capital base. That is why the Pro-versus-DIY mix question is, at bottom, a turnover and working-capital question.
Why turnover compressed after FY21
Lowe's turnover slid from 3.8x in FY21 to a 3.2-3.3x band from FY23 onward. The drivers visible in the 10-K filings:
- DIY demand normalised. The pandemic-era surge in homeowner projects faded; big-ticket discretionary categories (appliances, flooring, outdoor) softened first, and those are slower-turning to begin with.
- Higher rates cooled projects. Mortgage and financing costs lengthened homeowner decision cycles, pushing out the repeat-purchase cadence that drives turnover.
- Inventory discipline, not a velocity rebound. The recovery to 3.3x came from holding inventory roughly flat against returning sales, not from a structural acceleration in how fast stock moves.
The result is a company parked firmly in the low-3x band, structurally below Home Depot's low-to-mid 4x. Until the Pro mix moves materially, that gap is the baseline.