Thank you, Christine, and good morning, everyone. Joining us on our call today are Craig Menear, Chairman, CEO and President; Ted Decker, Executive Vice President of Merchandising; and Richard McPhail, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, the call will be open for questions. Questions will be limited to analysts and investors. And as a reminder, please limit yourself to one question with one follow-up. If we are unable to get to your question during the call, please call our Investor Relations Department at 770-384-2387. Before I turn the call over to Craig, let me remind you that today’s press release and the presentations made by our executives include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in the release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today’s presentations will also include certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of these measures is provided on our website. Now, let me turn the call over to Craig.

Thank you, Isabel, and thanks to all of you for joining our call this morning. We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy, and our thoughts and prayers continue to be with all of those that have been directly impacted by COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact have forced us to change the way we live, work, and interact with each other. Though these tough times have been unquestionably challenging, as we mentioned in the first quarter, we have navigated this crisis by aligning our decisions and actions to some of our most important values, do the right thing and take care of our people. Our focus has been and continues to be on two key priorities: the safety and well-being of our associates and customers, and providing our customers with the products and services they need at this time. In the first quarter, we had to adjust our stores to an environment that promoted social and physical distancing, and we did this by implementing a change to store hours, limiting the number of customers in stores and eliminating traffic-driving incidents, as well as operational changes like floor markings, signage, and plexiglass shields. In the second quarter, we continued to adapt based on our learnings and ever-changing environment. Our team continues to work to promote a safe shopping environment. We have made several adjustments in the quarter to our operating approach. First, we expanded our operating hours from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. This action was taken to relieve the end-of-day bottlenecks we observed in some stores while we were operating under more restrictive hours. Second, we modified the national approach that we had in the first quarter to limit the number of customers in stores and now are taking a more localized approach by relying on our store managers and field teams to closely monitor safety and implement customer limits as needed. Third, we announced that masks or facial coverings are required for all associates and customers in our U.S. stores and other facilities. Given the ongoing demands and complexity of the current environment, we’ve continued to focus on taking care of our people by extending weekly bonuses for hourly associates in our stores and distribution centers. Through the second quarter, we have spent approximately $1.3 billion on enhanced associate pay and benefits in response to COVID-19. Additionally, the company’s first-half performance resulted in a record payout for Success Sharing, our profit-sharing program for our hourly associates. I’m incredibly proud of our associates for the many ways that they have lived our values by serving our customers, communities, and each other during this unprecedented time. Our team has demonstrated ongoing flexibility to effectively operate in this dynamic environment while also executing to deliver record-breaking sales. Sales for the second quarter were $38.1 billion, up 23.4% from last year. Comp sales were up 23.4% from last year, with U.S. comps of positive 25%. Diluted earnings per share were $4.02 in the second quarter. These record results were driven by broad-based strength across our stores and geographies. As Ted will detail, both ticket and transactions were up double-digit in the quarter and we saw healthy growth from both our Pro and DIY customers. During the quarter, we saw customers take on projects throughout their homes. From deck building to painting projects, landscape work, and home repairs due to increased wear and tear. Clearly, our customers engaged with home improvement in a meaningful way. That being said, as we discussed in the first quarter, we’re cautious to extrapolate trends from the first half of the year into a forecast for the remainder of the year, particularly given the tremendous amount of uncertainty we face regarding the duration and continued impacts of the virus. So while we can’t predict the sales trajectory for the back half of the year, we do know that for many of our customers, the home has never been more important. Our recent customer survey work tells us that customers have a continued willingness to take on both indoor and outdoor projects in the near term. Customers are consolidating the number of retailers they visit and are blending the physical and digital elements of the shopping experience more than ever before. As a result, the distinct competitive advantages and overarching benefits of an interconnected One Home Depot strategy have never been more relevant. Our interconnected retail strategy and underlying technology infrastructures have supported record web traffic on a consistent basis for the past several months. Sales leveraging our digital platforms increased approximately 100% in the quarter and more than 60% of the time our customers opted to pick up their order at a store. The accelerated growth of our interconnected and digital offerings has given us the opportunity to showcase in a very condensed timeframe new capabilities in different ways to engage with The Home Depot that customers may not have been fully aware of. The rate at which customers are authenticating with us is also accelerated, which provides us with a unique opportunity to know our customers even better. This is critical as we continue on our journey to offer a deeper level of personalization and further enhance the interconnected shopping experience. That being said, the step change in demand across our digital platforms is not without its challenges, particularly from a delivery and fulfillment standpoint. We’ve been able to leverage investments we have made in the scale and flexibility of our supply chain network to relieve some of the pressure. This is exactly what we did during the quarter when we temporarily transitioned one of our recently opened market delivery centers or MDCs to a direct fulfillment center or DFC, which primarily fulfills online orders. The investments that we have made in the underlying infrastructure and systems supporting the MDC, coupled with a strong cross-functional alignment across the organization enabled us to make this conversion just a few short weeks. The net result for our customers was the reduction in lead times for orders flowing from our direct fulfillment network. We are focused on continuing the momentum of our strategic investments to enhance the interconnected shopping experience and position ourselves for continued share capture over the long term. At the same time, we know that we must remain agile and flexible to execute against the demands of the current environment. Through it all, we will continue to lead with our values and I could not be more proud of the resiliency and strength of the team has demonstrated as we navigate these extraordinary circumstances together. I want to thank our incredible associates and supplier partners for their hard work and dedication to serve our customers and communities. And with that, I’d like to turn the call over to Ted.

Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone. I too want to thank all our associates and supplier partners for their relentless focus on serving our customers. During the second quarter, we saw unprecedented levels of engagement from both our DIY and Pro customers. Our team satisfied the strong demand by working together in a flexible and agile manner while also prioritizing safety. As an example, we decided to cancel our Annual Memorial Day event and adjust other spring events as we didn’t want to drive even more traffic into already crowded areas for our store, like garden and paints. We also removed most of our off-shelf merchandising displays in order to support social distancing. Our teams were incredibly flexible and worked in a cross-functional manner to coordinate changes. We altered marketing plans, social media product flow, product selection, and space allocation. Our merchants, suppliers, marketers, supply chain, merchandising execution, and store team remained agile throughout the quarter and focused on our customers. We are fortunate to have the best supplier partners in the business; leveraging our tools and analytics we worked together to make real-time adjustments to our assortments. In many instances, we introduced alternative products and reduced assortments to the highest demand SKUs that our partners could supply most effectively. As an example, to support in-stock levels for high-demand items such as cleaning products, we worked with suppliers to streamline production on key products, sizes, and fragrances. And as you heard from Craig, the investments we’ve made in our supply chain over the last decade allowed us to be more flexible than ever in flowing product to the right geographies. During the second quarter, 13 of our 14 merchandising departments posted double-digit comps in the quarter led by our lumber department, while our kitchen and bath department posted high single-digit comps. During the quarter, comp average ticket increased 10.1% and comp transactions increased 12.3%. The growth in our comp average ticket was driven by both an increase in basket size as well as customers trading up to new and innovative items. In addition, inflation in core commodity categories like lumber positively impacted our average ticket growth by approximately 61 basis points. The strength of our comp transaction growth was driven by consistently strong in-store and online transactions. During the second quarter, big-ticket comp transactions, those over $1,000, were approximately 16%. We saw very strong performance across a number of big-ticket categories, like appliances, riding lawnmowers, and patio furniture. However, this strength was partially offset by softer performance in certain indoor installation-heavy categories, like special order kitchens and countertops. We saw strong sales growth for both our Pro and DIY customers, with DIY sales growing faster than Pro sales. Sales to our Pro customers accelerated meaningfully compared to the first quarter and grew double digits compared to the second quarter of last year. Looking deeper into our Pro sales, we saw notable strengths with our smaller pro customer. As markets continue to reopen, we see increasing demand from all our Pro customer cohorts. We continue to lean into our strategic investments to create a Pro ecosystem that encompasses professional-grade products, exclusive brands, enhanced delivery, credit, digital capabilities, field sales support, HD rental, and more. We believe our differentiated ecosystem will continue to drive deeper engagement with our Pro customers. Turning toward DIY customers, our DIY customers are re-engaging with their home and with The Home Depot in a meaningful way. They are engaging across the store. While we’ve seen strong demand with exterior projects like building decks, sheds, fences, and gardens, we’ve also seen strong growth with interior projects, like hard surface flooring, interior lighting, and painting, to name a few. We firmly believe that our One Home Depot strategy is creating a best-in-class interconnected shopping experience. We are building unique capabilities that let our customers engage across our digital platforms, our updated physical stores, and our enhanced delivery experience. Our confidence in these new capabilities led us to change our tagline and marketing efforts to 'how doers get more done.' During the second quarter, new and existing customers set record levels of engagement across our new capabilities. The rate at which our existing customers are adopting new channels to engage with The Home Depot more than doubled here to date. We also saw a third of recently acquired customers re-engage with The Home Depot for another purchase in a different department. During the second quarter, our mobile apps had record downloads and we saw significant growth in conversion rates across all digital platforms. These results confirm our belief that we’ve been making investments in the right areas of our business and that those investments are resonating with our customers. Let me give you an example to help illustrate our enhanced capabilities and options for customers. Over the last couple of years, we’ve enabled multiple fulfillment options, including buy online, pickup in store with convenient pickup lockers, buy online, deliver from store with our express car and van delivery, and most recently, our curbside pickup option. As customers accelerate their adoption of an interconnected shopping experience, we’ve seen increased usage of these different fulfillment options. During the second quarter, we saw triple-digit growth across all these platforms. Another example is our HD Home business. As part of our strategic investments over the last three years, we’ve been leaning into several home décor categories. As consumers shop fewer and fewer retailers, our research shows that our customers are increasingly looking to homedepot.com to help with project completers like room décor and textiles. We’re investing to create a better frictionless online shopping experience for décor. We are showcasing our collections, enabling shop by room, and highlighting our capabilities and product offerings with HD Home. With record levels of traffic on homedepot.com, we’ve seen significant outsized sales growth with our HD Home assortment. All the investments across the business make us more flexible as we continue to navigate this fluid and dynamic situation. As we look to the back half of the year, we’ll be working with our supplier partners, as well as our cross-functional teams to satisfy our customers' evolving home improvement needs.

Thank you, Ted, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone joining the call today and we hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. In the second quarter, total sales were $38.1 billion, a 23.4% increase from last year. Foreign exchange rates negatively impacted total sales growth by approximately $200 million. Our total company comps were positive 23.4% for the quarter, with positive comps of 24.6% in May, 25.7% in June, and 20.4% in July. Comps in the U.S. were positive 25% for the quarter, with positive comps of 27.3% in May, 27.3% in June, and 21% in July. As you heard from Craig and Ted, the strong demand we saw was broad-based, with a high degree of performance uniformity among our three U.S. divisions in Canada. All 19 of our U.S. regions posted double-digit positive comps, and our Canadian business reported record sales. Mexico’s performance was impacted by a lag in COVID-19 cases relative to the U.S. and Canada, and as a result, Mexico’s performance was negative in the beginning of the quarter before turning to positive growth at the end of the quarter. In the second quarter, our gross margin was 34%, an increase of approximately 20 basis points from last year. The change in our gross margin was driven by several factors, including a benefit from a reduction of annual events during the quarter. This benefit was partially offset by the mix of products sold and pressure from shrink. During the second quarter, operating expense as a percent of sales of approximately 18.1% increased approximately 10 basis points compared to last year. Let me take a moment to comment on a few of our expense items. First, during the quarter, we continued to support our associates with enhanced benefits, which totaled approximately $480 million in the second quarter, resulting in 125 basis points of expense deleverage. Second, we incurred approximately $110 million of operational COVID-related expenses, including personal protective equipment for our associates and customers, and enhanced cleaning of our stores, resulting in approximately 30 basis points of operating expense deleverage. Third, we recorded expenses related to our strategic investment plan of approximately $280 million, an increase of approximately $40 million compared to last year. We are committed to completing our strategic investments. However, given the priority around safety and the complexities of the operating environment we find ourselves in, we’re deferring certain in-store investments and now expect some of the projects we initially earmarked for fiscal 2020 to be completed in fiscal 2021. And finally, during the second quarter, we showed strong expense control in all areas of the business and drove approximately 145 basis points of expense leverage. Included in these 145 basis points of leverage is approximately 90 basis points of pressure driven by accrued bonus expense related to our significant outperformance for our biannual store success sharing program and store- and field-based management bonuses for the first half. Our operating margin for the second quarter was approximately 15.9%, an increase of approximately 10 basis points from last year. Interest and other expenses for the second quarter grew by $54 million to $337 million, due primarily to higher long-term debt levels than one year ago. In the second quarter, our effective tax rate was 24.4%, compared to 24.6% in the second quarter of fiscal 2019. Our diluted earnings per share for the second quarter were $4.02, an increase of 26.8% compared to the second quarter of 2019. At the end of the quarter, merchandise inventories declined $1.2 billion to $13.5 billion, driven by the significant and steady demand we saw during the quarter. Inventory turns were 6.1 times, up from 5.1 times last year. Moving on to capital allocation, while our long-term principle of returning excess capital to shareholders remains intact, we believe that in this unprecedented environment, it is appropriate for us to maintain a strong liquidity position. During the quarter, we invested approximately $445 million back into our business in the form of capital expenditures and we repaid approximately $1.75 billion of long-term debt. We also paid $1.6 billion in dividends to our shareholders. Computed on the average beginning and ending long-term debt and equity for the trailing 12 months, return on invested capital was approximately 41.1%, down from 43.7% in the second quarter of fiscal 2019. This decrease primarily reflects our decision to temporarily enhance our liquidity position, including the suspension of our share repurchase program back in March. Looking ahead, through the first two weeks of August, comparable sales growth remains at levels similar to total company’s second quarter comp sales. Our customers tell us that they plan to continue to invest in a wide variety of projects to maintain and enhance their homes. However, given the degree of uncertainty in our external environment, we cannot extrapolate current observations to predict future performance. As a result, we are focused on operating with discipline and flexibility in order to grow market share regardless of what demand patterns emerge. And despite the significant uncertainty in the current environment, we do believe in the resilience of home improvement demand over the long term. The home typically represents our customers’ largest asset, the housing stock is aging, and we believe the capabilities we’re investing in across our interconnected platform will position us well to continue capturing market share in any environment. Thank you for your participation in today’s call, and we are now ready for questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you, everyone. Good morning. My first question is about the medium to long-term margin potential of the business. The current environment is quite dynamic, and I assume you would still describe it as competitive. When you presented the One HD plan, much of it focused on recovering the margins that you would invest to make improvements, but you didn't include any sales growth upside, and therefore, you didn't really commit to increasing margins. Can you discuss whether this situation changes? It's not just about increasing margins over time, but does it indicate potential for gradual margin improvement, or will you remain focused on reinvesting and maintaining a specific margin level in the future?

Simeon, as we mentioned last December, all our investments in the business are aimed at positioning us to outpace the market in the long term. The main goal is to drive additional operating margin dollars and bottom-line growth, which remains our primary focus. We are not concerned about fluctuations in basis points or rates. Our emphasis is on increasing the growth of operating margin dollars.

Thanks for that. Craig, you mentioned in the article from this week that correlations don’t work right now, which makes sense. Can you discuss two components of that? How does the surge in home improvement transition from spring and summer into fall? And do you expect these surge conditions to last until there’s a vaccine?

I mean, it’s really so uncertain. We don’t know the answer to that, which is why we can’t really extrapolate current performance to future performance. What we do know is, again, the home has never been more important to the customer. We’re all spending lots of time there. We’re seeing things that need to be done or things that you want to be done. There’s additional wear and tear, and we’re clearly seeing the customer engaged in a very strong way right now. The most important thing for us, as we think about the future going forward, is we operate in key areas on a pretty short cycle. So think labor planning, think inventory planning. Those are short cycle activities for us and that’s what we’re really focused on. How do we remain flexible and adjust? Assuming that, they are asking for a thing as we had really unbelievable demand for multiple quarters or multiple months in a row. As Richard shared the quarterly, monthly comps and the team was able to react to that and that’s really what we’re focused on being able to do.

Okay. Thanks. Good luck.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Lasser with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question and I guess you practice what you preach with doers getting it done. My question is on the Pro business, which you mentioned was up double digits. Can you qualify the spread between what you think your Pro business did and what you think your DIY business did? And with that being said, is there an argument and do you subscribe to it that the Pro business is being held back by consumers not wanting outsiders in their home and don’t want to be dislocated from their home in this current time. So there is a pretty visible path to future growth as the Pro business takes over for the strength from the DIY business right now?

Michael, we’re obviously not going to split out the numbers on cohorts for obvious reasons. But we were super pleased that we saw double-digit growth with the Pro, as well as incredible strength with the DIY customers. They’re clearly engaged with projects as well. I’ll let Bill jump in with a little bit more color as to what we’re seeing in terms of major markets where there’s still a little pressure as it relates to permitting that?

Yeah. Hey, Michael. It’s Bill Lennie. We did see good Pro sales growth across our cohort towards all end markets in all geographies. There was notable strength with the low spend Pro. They were less impacted with a downturn in Q1 but continued to rebound and accelerate in Q2. The high spend Pro also continued to rebound, and I would see that as being an outcome of permitting and job inspections coming back online, and there are areas where homeowners are becoming more comfortable with having Pros and service providers in their homes. There are some end markets that haven’t totally recovered. I’ll give you one example, and that would be multifamily property managers. Obviously, there’s low returns on the units; they have less access to the properties and they still remain in more of a break-fix mode, holding back major rehabs and capital projects. But with that said, even in multifamily, Pro customers, we’ve seen an upturn in a rebound in sales to those cohorts.

Thanks very much. And my follow-up question is on the gross margin, Richard. You gave a little bit of detail on some of the moving pieces, noting that mix and shrink were still dragged in the quarter. So how should we think about and how should we be calibrating our models for when shrink is going to get better and what point do you think the promotional environment will move from being supportive to more normal?

Michael, thanks for the question. So for the quarter, the most significant influence was really the cancellations of annual events during the quarter. If you look at the pressures again, as we stated, there was some pressure from mix and from shrink. But really those pressures were consistent with what we expected at the beginning of the year and what we saw in Q1. As you know, shrink is an item that we have pushed a few initiatives towards last year and this year. Those efforts are ongoing. We will see benefits from that over time. It takes a while for that to work its way through the system. But again, shrink and mix, those components really worked out where we expected they would have even at the beginning of the year.

And as far as promotions, though, we’ll continue to have promotions and events, but they will continue to be modified. So when you think of the beginning of the year, our Spring Black Friday event and Memorial event, we essentially canceled those. We had a modified, more modest 4th of July event where there was some promotion, not as deep. There was some in-store activation in our event spaces. I would say, going forward, we continue to have modest modified events, but a net benefit with promotions.

That’s very helpful. Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from line of Steven Forbes with Guggenheim. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Maybe just to focus on the additional workforce benefits that you’ve noted here, I don’t know, Richard, if you can go into a little more detail about the $480 million or is it simply just tied to the weekly bonuses? And then just revisit sort of what the current thinking is around the continuation of these bonuses and what have you committed to and sort of how do you sort of think about balancing the cultural impacts right of it with obviously the commitment you have towards safety, et cetera?

Thank you for the question, Steven. Looking at the approximately $480 million we invested in enhanced benefits during the quarter, around $360 million of that will continue into the third quarter, primarily as weekly bonuses for associates. The remaining $120 million spent in Q2 was on benefits like enhanced overtime pay that will not continue into the third quarter. To reiterate, about $360 million from the second quarter will carry into the third quarter. It's important to note that in a 23% comp environment, there are more hours and more associates eligible for those weekly bonuses. We certainly didn't plan for a 25% or 23% comp environment at the start of the quarter, so that number is naturally higher in Q2 because of that. That's the breakdown of our associate expense, which we review continuously. We believe that this expense was prudent and appropriate in the second quarter, and we will keep reviewing it as circumstances change.

Thank you. And then just a quick follow-up, right, as we look at lumber inflation here and think about the puts and takes on the model. I don’t know if you sort of just give us your current thinking about the potential implications as we look out to the third quarter here, given that you called out mixed. I mean, how do we sort of contextualize the P&L impacts?

Well, on lumber, we called out a commodity benefit in Q2 of 61 basis points. Now lumber in the last several weeks of the quarter and into the first two weeks of this quarter has hit all-time record highs, each of framing and panel are over $700. They are up essentially about 115% DIY. But I would say, a big piece of that was when COVID started. None of us knew where this was going to go, and the mills took a conservative approach and largely backed off harvesting trees and cutting logs. That product started up again about mid-quarter of Q2, and we’re starting to see much better flow in lumber. So I’m not going to predict lumber prices, but with more supply coming into the marketplace, hopefully, we’re going to tame these $700 levels. Although we do have substantial support with housing and all the projects that Craig referred to, certainly in pressure-treated decking, just a robust decking boom, but we should see some moderation, but the unit demand, even with these higher prices has remained double-digit and incredibly strong, so to strengthen the Q3, certainly right now, but where it shakes out ultimately in margin not certainly.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from line of Karen Short with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Thanks very much. Just a couple of questions on e-commerce. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the behavior with the DIY customer versus the Pro. I guess, with respect to the growth rates for each, maybe a little color on ticket and also behavior on buy online and pickup in store for each segment? And then, I guess, I’m just curious, broadly, which segment you think you’re gaining greater share, whether they’ve gained greater share within 2Q? And I have one other quick question.

Yeah. Karen, on the e-comm business, again, we’re not going to split out the cohort in terms of the numbers, but what I’ll tell you is that we saw great engagement with both the Pro and the DIY customer, and we’re seeing accelerated engagement, as Ted called out, with the capabilities that we have with both the Pro and the DIY customer, so we’re very, very pleased with that and tremendous growth there. And we really believe that the current environment has allowed us to accelerate the exposure, the capabilities we’ve built in a tremendous way. So we’re very, very pleased. It’s the project nature of the business for both the Pro and the DIY customer that’s driving, helping to drive the growth in the e-comm world. When you think about doing a project, customers are blending the physical and digital worlds, we have an expanded assortment in the digital world. As Ted called out, when it comes to completing a room, our HD Home categories of completion, we’re seeing tremendous growth there as the customer purchases that product online. That obviously has a tendency to be more DIY-oriented as they complete their room. But we’re super pleased with what we’re seeing with both the Pro and the DIY customer.

And I would say, clearly, with the numbers online effectively doubling that business in the second quarter, increasing penetration over 14%. As you can imagine, every metric is positive. The traffic across all our properties, the active customers, the app downloads, the conversion rates all very, very strong. Our actual active customers, the number of active customers also doubled. So as Craig said, our job going forward now is to just not reap the benefits of this activity in Q2, but with all these new customers engaging across all The Home Depot capabilities, we’re very closely watching reengagement rates and I mentioned a couple statistics in my prepared remarks, but we’re seeing are people shopping across departments. Are they engaging in other capabilities? What is their duration before there is repeat engagement with a capability or indeed a purchase? And the name of the game for us is engagement and that is really what’s all behind 'how doers get more done.' The more our customers engage with our capabilities, whether it’s in the store, self-checkout, app downloads, delivery, search, tool rental, using our lockers, using our calculators, every time our customer engages in another capability we’ve built out that stickiness, that’s repeat business, and that’s customer loyalty. A quarter like this has just been terrific and advancing our initiatives and we’re working very hard to keep that momentum going.

And, Karen, you asked about market share. Obviously, market share is hard to calculate for us, only as good as the public data we have at our fingertips. But if you do look at census data and you look at the next categories where we compete 444 and 4441, this space has grown significantly in the low teens. We obviously grew much faster than our space, so we captured considerable share we believe based on publicly available data.

Okay. That’s very helpful. And I just had one quick question, in terms of the commentary, you made a comment on trading up, you were seeing trading up, I was just wondering if you could just give a little more color on that?

Just continued interest with our customers, both Pro and DIY, to engage with innovative products. It certainly can be tools, but it can also be pressure-treated lumber with higher efficacy. It can be stain-resistant carpeting; I mean it’s really across the business where we offer benefits and attributes to our product and the customer shows a willingness to trade up to that.

Great. Thanks.

Our next question comes from line of Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning. Great results. I was wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on category performance, areas of relative strength. I know you called out 13 out of 14 businesses being strong? And then if you could also contextualize the opportunity for HD Home as we look ahead?

Yeah. Really the strength we had in the business was throughout the categories, as well as throughout our geographies. And when you think about, Ted talked about the fact that every single category of goods was double-digit with the exception of high single digits in kitchen and bath, which is a pretty invasive indoor type category. We were super pleased with that performance and that growth in the second quarter. And when we look at it on a geography basis, for example, every single region, all top 40 markets were double-digit crop growth.

Okay. That’s helpful. And then, Craig, when you look at the strengths in the business, there are always concerns about some pull-forward of demand versus the undercurrents of sustainability. So when you look ahead to the back half, I know you talked about August being strong, but when we think about the back half and even into ‘21, how do you think about these mix in dynamics?

I mean, at this point, as I said earlier, we’re looking at what’s customer behavior, what’s the sentiment, we’re monitoring that incredibly closely. We operate on short cycles, and the things that are most critical for that, which is our labor planning and inventory planning. And we really don’t know how to extrapolate from where we are to what the future is. What we know is, we have to rely on the capabilities that we’ve built to be flexible and to adjust to be able to deal with whatever gets thrown at us, and that’s really what our focus is, Chuck.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you.

Yeah.

Our next question comes from line of Zach Fadem with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Hey. Good morning. So relative to Q1, it looks like your ticket growth was similar in Q2, but curious if you could talk through the dynamics that drove transaction growth from negative 4% in Q1 to over 12% in Q2. How much did the traffic increase? What was your own doing given the Q1 restrictions? And then what would you attribute to just evolving consumer behavior and the return of the Pro customer?

Yeah. I think a significant portion of the change was in terms of the constraints that we put on the business in Q1, which were pretty severe. I mean, when you close down 25% of your customer-facing hours, that’s going to have an impact. And when you kill all of your spring promotions and major events that historically drive big amounts of traffic to the stores, that’s going to have an impact. We obviously continue to learn and adjust based on the learning and feedback from our field teams, and that’s really what we’ve done and made the adjustments that I called out in my proposed remarks in the second quarter, and that certainly helped contribute to driving transaction growth.

Got it.

I would just...

Oh! Go ahead.

I wanted to add that the reduced traffic was not solely due to our limiting of hours. Our Pro and consumer customers were also consolidating their trips. While transactions declined, the average ticket increased, driven by the number of units per transaction. Customers were definitely combining trips. In Q2, not only did we see a lift as many shelter-in-place orders eased and customers became more willing to visit stores, but we also experienced significant growth in ticket size. However, there was a slight easing in the number of units per transaction, though it remains very healthy.

Thanks, Ted. That’s helpful. Regarding the supply chain, I'm curious if you could highlight any challenges or issues related to out of stocks or inventory availability in Q2. It seems like it wasn't a significant concern, but do you expect any ongoing challenges with lumber or other product availability as we move into the second half of the year?

Look, when you run 20% plus comps, you certainly put pressure throughout the supply chain network from the vendor community through our own supply chain. So certainly there’s pressure there. What I would tell you is, again, as Richard called out, with 20% comps for each of the months in a row and every single week during the quarter being double-digit growth north of 20%, the team was able to adjust and to adapt to that and did a terrific job, for sure.

Got it. Craig, thanks. Appreciate the time.

Sure.

Our next question comes from a line of Scot Ciccarelli with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, guys. So with all the sales reaccelerating from July’s strong trends, I’m curious if July was particularly impacted either from supply shortages, be it lumber or something else that we keep hearing about, or maybe specific changes to your promotional plan?

Thanks, Scot. It actually was not supply chain or demand. It was a function of really two factors. And I think the headline here is, if you normalize for these two effects, June and July looked almost identical from a comp perspective. So, the first element here was our pullback on event, our own events, annual events, which had a greater impact in July than for June. And the second dynamic here was that we saw an earlier start to hotter temperatures in June than we saw last year. So there were some comp benefit in categories like ACs and fans in June versus July when you do the year-over-year compare. So again, when you look at those two months and you make those adjustments, they were almost identical from a comp perspective, and that’s carried on to the first two weeks of the third quarter.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense, Richard. And then you also talked about the need to delay some of your planned investments, obviously, the multiyear plan. Can you provide some color on maybe the magnitude of costs that may have to get pushed out to ‘21 from ‘20?

Sure. So, I’d say, first of all, we don’t see the need to spend any more than we originally planned. It’s simply the dynamic of pushing spend into ‘21 as we make sure that we’re focused on safety in our stores. So just to give you a little bit of context, think about our capital plan for the year, which is around $2.8 billion, we might defer several hundred million, probably, less than $0.5 billion that could be pushed into next year. Depending on the size of that deferral, 2021 CapEx may look more similar to 2020 levels. And from an expense perspective, the deferral is lower than the capital deferral.

Got it. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Sure.

Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Horvers with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning. I want to think about the categories a little bit more as well. Can you talk maybe broadly about what indoor comps versus outdoor comps looks like, particularly as we try to get a sense of what underlying demand might look like as we get deeper into the fall?

Let me start with one comment, and that is if you back out our garden business, our seasonal business, we were north of 20% comps even with that backed out. So this isn’t a quarter that was dependent upon our seasonal business. And I’ll let Ted share some color on how we’re seeing the engagement indoors.

Chris, we saw really strong demand across the business, especially in DIY interior projects, as we've mentioned regarding professionals and third-party services. Excluding installation-heavy categories, flooring, paint, plumbing, and electrical were all performing well, with kitchen and bath just shy of double digits. Our bath segment did achieve double-digit growth. There was significant strength in kitchen-related products, and we believe the medium and long-term implications are promising. Questions have persisted about whether Gen X and millennials would engage in home improvement at the same level as previous generations. Home Depot played a key role in encouraging baby boomers to gain confidence in DIY. What we're observing now is that all generations are participating, with Gen X and millennials getting involved. Starting with a first DIY project, like gardening or painting—traditionally a popular choice—can build confidence to tackle larger tasks, necessitating more advanced tools for ambitious projects. This mirrors the experiences of baby boomers during the industry's growth. The long-term advantage is that this next large generation is very active in home improvement.

That's great. Can you discuss some of the investment levels you're planning in relation to the $40 million increase year-over-year in the second quarter? How do you view that for the third and fourth quarters? Additionally, if you haven't mentioned it, how much do the PPE and COVID-related costs persist in the second half? Thank you.

Sure. Regarding the expense aspect of our investment program, we are navigating a very dynamic environment. The shift is not expected to significantly impact the company, but we are managing it as needed. In terms of PPE, we incurred costs of about $110 million for associate and customer safety, primarily for masks and PPE. This expense became significant in the second quarter when we required them for our associates and customers. We have also improved our efficiency in distributing these masks, so we expect this expense to decrease in the third quarter.

Got it. Best of luck.

Thank you.

Our final question comes from the line of Elizabeth Suzuki with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thank you. Just with your last quarter you had given us some color around sales growth in urban markets versus rural and then the gap there. I mean, did that gap close this quarter and are you seeing your urban markets getting closer to the overall chain average?

And again, we saw in all of our top 40 markets double-digit growth, and it’s one of the most narrow performances we’ve seen by region, by market, in quite some time.

Thank you, Christine, and thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you on our third quarter earnings call in November.

This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.