Lowe's online sales grew 10.5% year over year in the fourth quarter, more than eight times the 1.3% comparable sales increase the home improvement retailer reported on its Feb. 25 earnings call.

The divergence highlights where Lowe's is winning: digital channels, the Pro contractor segment, and its Home Services installation business. Each offset a DIY category that Chairman, President and CEO Marvin Ellison described as consumers continuing to "delay big-ticket, discretionary DIY projects" amid "current economic uncertainty."

What changed in the Pro segment?

Lowe's did not break out Pro revenue from total results, but the company's Q4 infographic called out "positive Pro comp sales driven by broad-based growth across categories and regions."

Three product moves backed the segment:

• A relaunched MyLowe's Pro Rewards loyalty program
• An AI-enabled Pro Companion that prepares sales associates for customer conversations
• A Pro Extended Aisle feature giving Pro desk associates direct access to supplier catalogs

Joseph M. McFarland III, executive vice president of stores, framed the demand environment cautiously: "Looking ahead, in our recent survey, our core Pro customers indicate they continue to work on smaller-ticket repair projects and that their backlogs remain stable."

That is a signal worth watching for anyone selling into the Pro channel. Stable backlogs and smaller-ticket work point to transactional cycles rather than large project bids — a shift that favors quote speed and stock availability over enterprise account management.

How does the new tool stack change sales workflows?

The Pro Companion targets one of the highest-friction moments in B2B home improvement selling: the in-store or job-site conversation where associates need product specs, pricing, and project context at once. Pulling that information into a single interface compresses prep time before the customer interaction.

The Pro Extended Aisle extends that reach by connecting the Pro desk directly to supplier catalogs — a structural change that lets associates quote SKUs they do not physically stock. For sales leaders benchmarking associate productivity, the bottleneck moves from inventory lookup to customer conversation.

How does Lowe's compare to Home Depot?

The competitive picture sharpened the day before, on Feb. 24, when Home Depot reported its own quarterly results. Home Depot's Pro business "continues to expand rapidly and now accounts for nearly half of its total revenue," according to PYMNTS coverage of that report. Home Depot CEO Ted Decker attributed the rest of his company's muted growth to "ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing."

Lowe's does not disclose Pro's share of total revenue, so the two companies' Pro segments cannot be compared on the same metric. What is comparable: both retailers are pulling Pro growth from a DIY market that is not growing.

What is the digital and services mix?

Lowe's Home Services business — installation and assembly work performed by local independent installers — posted "high-single-digit growth" in the quarter, Ellison said. He framed the offering as a friction-removal play: "This is another example of a customer experience that we have overhauled at Lowe's by removing the friction from what was a time-consuming process through digital tools and enhanced service to create an intuitive installation solution for our do-it-for-me customers."

For sellers of adjacent software and services, the category is splitting into two distinct motions: a transactional online motion for DIY and small-ticket Pro repair, and a higher-touch, digitally enabled motion for installation and large projects. Sales teams that can serve both motions from the same account will capture more wallet share than those that pick one.

Lowe's next earnings report will reveal whether the Pro Companion and Extended Aisle convert associate productivity gains into reported Pro segment growth, or whether the company's continued silence on Pro revenue keeps the segment harder to benchmark than Home Depot's.