Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD) reported awful results with same store-sales crashing between 15% to 20% in the Northeast and certain regions in the South -- the areas most affected by the drop in new home construction and remodeling. Margins were also on the light side as new management has decided to re-invest in its employees.

Home Depot pointed out during the conference call that more downside could be on the way. Private residential investment, which was fueled by home equity loans and the refinancing boom, peaked in 2005 at 6.5% of GDP and is now down 5%. However, the norm is 4%. Therefore, management used this stat to suggest any recovery for Home Depot will be pushed out until 2008.

Home Depot also discussed the need to invest in its employees. That is a euphemism for paying higher wages. It did not take much reading between the lines to conclude that tension between Home Depot store-level employees and super-highly-paid former CEO Bob Nardelli hit a crescendo over compensation. Under Nardelli, organic sales growth slowed while return on capital expanded which means employees got squeezed.

Two other points of note during the call -- lumber prices hit a five-year low and the worst of the housing downturn is in Florida and Boston.

Investors should continue to build a position in Home Depot's stock. When considering a 15% to 20% drop in same-store sales in certain regions of the US and the stock was only down $1.00 during trading, it is a sign that most of the sellers are gone. Further, the new management team appears to making fundamentally sound changes to the home retailer. My advice is to buy and be patient.

This morning's New York Times reports that The General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo helped squelch a story by her colleague Charles Gasparino. The story involved the resignation of Todd Thomson from Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C).

I've been wondering whether this story had gone dark. But it looks like it just went into the in-depth reporting phase. Now the New York Times has arrived with this bombshell.

What happened is that CNBC's head of news programming, Jonathan Wald, asked Gasparino to investigate Bartiromo's trip on Citigroup's corporate jet with Thomson. Gasparino did so. But when Bartiromo got wind of it -- and specifically the notion that Thomson's job status was threatened -- she complained to Wald. And for some reason, Gasparino did not discuss his reporting on the air. Moreover, some in the network complain that Bartiromo's complaint was the culprit. Wald suggested that the sourcing for the story was not strong enough to air it.

Now the media is starting to analyze her on-air interviews. Some of them, such as the one with former Home Depot (NYSE: HD) CEO Bob Nardelli, were tough. Since she had no business tie to HD, she felt free to "pepper him with sharp questions relating to his conduct and governance." But, as I posted a few weeks ago, her business tie to Citigroup probably led to a much friendlier style when it came to interviewing Thomson in August 2005.

Here's an idea: Why not hold CNBC reporters to the same disclosure standards to which it holds its on-air guests?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns shares of Citigroup and GE and has no financial interest in Home Depot or The New York Times.

24/7 Wall St. generated a list of 10 public company CEOs in December where investors in the underlying companies would be better served by a new CEO. Three of these have already been axed, and that is in roughly 6 weeks. Some calls aren't actually calling for the CEOs to be fired, but a title change or strategy shift was in order. There were few outright "He's Gotta Go!" and there still are. The FIRED CEO's are first, and the others are alphabetical by company. The names are highlighted so you can see the full comments and suggestions from the original article on each, and the original comments left on Bloggingstocks are here for the 7 of the 10 that are still pending:

Dell's (NASDAQ:DELL) Kevin Rollins.
STATUS: FIRED! His name will be forgotten by Wall Street most likely and will be referred to as 'That guy that took Dell down.'

Gap Inc.'s (NYSE:GPS) Paul Pressler.
STATUS: KIA! He's done and he'll have to go in for that old Japanese executive retraining boot camp before anyone speaks to him again.

The Home Depot's(NYSE:HD) Bob Nardelli.
STATUS: FIRED! But beware, he took a huge exit-payout and only has a 1-year non-compete. He'll probably end up in private equity and his name won't quietly disappear.

Amazon.com's (NASDAQ:AMZN) Jeff Bezos. He doesn't need to go away entirely! He just needs to do a partial title change. But will anyone inside the company tell the emperor he is wearing no space suit?
STATUS: Earnings are today, but either way the company could use an add-on here. I like Bezos and this will give him the latitude needed.

Citigroup's (NYSE:C) Chuck Prince. The prince calls for Draconian measures, and maybe the prince didn't mean just THIS Prince.
STATUS: Everyone has told this prince he isn't wearing clothes and he keeps ruling and ignores this. Sally Krawchek wasn't the problem. The stock is up in hopes that he'll leave and that new management can run the beast better.

Eastman Kodak's (NYSE:EK) Antonio Perez. Maybe he's nice, but for heaven's sake get the restructuring over with and get some mojo. Bring in a digital media leader.
STATUS: The earnings have turned, but the long painful restructuring continues and the last medical imaging sale funds might not be used aggressively enough. EK would still be better under a different digital leader.

Qualcomm Inc.'s (NASDAQ:QCOM) Paul Jacobs. He isn't being sent home yet, but his dad's shoes are proving very hard to fill.
STATUS: The note here is still in the pending file and he may survive if he can keep the stock from falling and if he can keep the company's patents and contracts alive.

Sirius Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) & XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:XMSR). It is a dead heat in the race, and if two companies need to merge, it's these two. There can be only one.
STATUS: Still pending, still a tie! They should just merge and get it over with. A merger wouldn't be great for consumers and competition, but would be best for investors.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s(NYSE:WMT) Lee Scott. The company is struggling under its own weight, and it needs some good PR. Getting rid of the Darth Vader of Corporate America and bringing in someone fun and likeable would be the best start.
STATUS: He's still gotta go. If he is still there at the end of this year it is because he intimidated every internal external challenger. Darth Vader wasn't a hero until the last 10 minutes of the original series after almost 6 hours of being the bad guy. Lee Scott could become a good guy if he would just leave.

Yahoo!'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) Terry Semel. Yes, when you see him leave or forced out, Yahoo! holders should be happy.
STATUS: Panama may save him, but Wall Street would rather see Semel leave. Sue Decker is better suited for the role.

A lot of these may be controversial, and there are plenty of other companies that might benefit from a new CEO. None of these attacks are personal and these are merely based on observation and analysis. The list could probably be 100 CEO's long.

Jon Ogg is a partner in 24/7 Wall St. LLC; He does not hold securities in the companies he covers. He also not been compensated to represent any of these companies in any light.

The nation's largest home-improvement retailer has completed its acquisition of Chinese home improvement retailer The Home Way as of yesterday. The Home Depot/Home Way deal had already received the needed approval from the Chinese government and is expected to close by the end of this year. In other words, pretty darn quickly.

Although official details have not been released on the financial impact this acquisition would have on Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD), earlier reports put the value of the deal at $100 million. With seemingly every industry looking to China for quick and rapid growth in the wake of the topsy-turvy U.S. market (especially in housing, where Home Depot is glued to the floor), Home Depot is no different.

In order for the company to boost its share price and get back on track, it needs better growth rates -- sustainable growth rates -- that shareholders demand. Home Depot CEO, Bob Nardelli, said that "This acquisition provides us with a great point of entry in one of the world's largest and fastest-growing home improvement markets [...] The Home Way is a strong brand that is already established as a value and price leader among Chinese consumers."

Standard PR words from a CEO I say, and they are of course true. Home Depot's acquisition of The Home Way gives the Atlanta-based company an immediate retail presence of 12 stores in six Chinese cities. When organic growth is too slow, acquire what you can. And, hopefully it will work.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. Vote for Bob Nardelli or check out the other overpaid CEOs.

Former General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) executive Bob Nardelli lost out to Jeff Immelt in the race to succeed Jack Welch as CEO. And The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) shareholders would have been better off if Nardelli had repotted himself elsewhere.

Since Nardelli joined Home Depot as CEO in December 2000, HD is down 40% compared to a 120% increase for competitor Lowe's Companies Inc. (NYSE: LOW). In the last five years, Home Depot's revenue grew at a 12.3% compound annual growth rate to $90.1 billion and its net income increased at a 17.7% annual rate to $6.1 billion -- not bad, but a far cry from Lowe's 18.2% revenue growth and 27.8% profit growth during the same period.

And all this inferior performance at Home Depot would not be so bad if Nardelli weren't so egregiously overpaid. He received roughly $30 million in 2005, almost six times the $5.5 million that Robert Niblock, Lowe's CEO, took home in 2005.

Investors in the market for bargain CEOs should stay away from Home Depot.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, and a Professor of Management at Babson College. He owns GE stock and has no financial interest in Home Depot or Lowe's.

With all the hubbub about the housing industry coming to a grinding halt, home improvement retailer Home Depot (NYSE: HD) seemed to echo that sentiment last week when it reported near-disastrous results for its latest quarter in terms of just about every mainstream metric that makes the bobbling heads on Wall Street shriek with fear. EPS off by a penny? Oh, the horror!

Are there other factors at play here besides the slowdown and subsequent rapid cool-off of the housing market this year? Motley Fool seems to think so, and there's a good bit of logic in the argument from a "downstream" perspective once you bring all the aggregate pieces into play on this particular chessboard.

The point is brought out here that Home Depot is spending billions of dollars acquiring commercial supply businesses. The only problem is that those businesses have operating margins that are significantly below those in the retail segment.

So, "buying growth" may be a simpleton strategy here, but it's not growing profit due to shrinking (and shrunk) margins in some of the acquired pieces of the pie. Are you concerned about growth when the profits head in the reverse direction at the same time and due to the same reason you wanted growth in the first place? Not a sustainable course of action really. Somebody tell Bob Nardelli, ok?

Analysis provided by Eric Buscemi of Fly on the Wall:

The numbers were so bad, the stock market assumed the Fed would have to start dropping rates rapidly and both Home Depot's (HD) stock and the market rallied:

* Comp store sales were down 5.1%, a complete disaster. In October, comp store sales were down 9%.
* Same store transactions were down 4%, a very bad number.
* All the growth figures in the earnings release were from acquisitions, there was no organic growth domestically.

Earnings per share is estimated to decline from 12 to 16% for the fourth quarter. Not good! Beside the weak demand environment, Home Depot's management introduced the Orange Juice rewards program for well-performing employees. Bob Nardelli said in yesterday's call that he set aside $30 million for his employees, this compares to $13.3 billion for share repurchases. This should make the MASSES happy: NOT! That is over 400x more money for shareholders than employees who show up to work each day. This, once again, points to Nardelli's poor decision making capabilities.

Home Depot's results were simply not good. It appears the slowdown in new construction and Home Depot's decision to increase exposure to the professional market will lead to a prolonged period of weak revenue performance. Yesterday's stock price jump appears to be a suckers rally and selling into strength might be the correct strategy with this stock.

Home Depot's Board of Directors will soon renovate CEO Bob Nardelli's rather large compensation package. Mr. Nardelli took over as Home Depot CEO in December 2000. His compensation since then has averaged about $50 million per year. When Mr. Nardelli took over, Home Depot stock was at $40.19; and the stock closed at $36.58 on 18 September 2006. During Mr. Nardelli's tenure as CEO, the share price of Lowe's, its main competitor, has gained 178%.

According to Bonnie Hill, Home Depot's compensation committee chair, Mr. Nardelli's pay package will be reconfigured if only to quiet shareholder outrage that the CEO continues to profit handsomely while investors do not. At Home Depot's annual meeting in May, shareholders withheld 30% of their votes, including votes for Mr. Nardelli.

Currently, the bulk of Mr. Nardelli's pay package is tied to the financial performance of Home Depot, NOT stock performance. Fair is fair. On Mr. Nardelli's watch, Home Depot's sales have increased from $45.7 billion in 2000 to $81.5 billion in 2005.

Still trying to recover from self-imposed wounds from the annual meeting debacle, Home Depot senior management is schmoozing with Wall Street as well as investors. CFO Carol Tome presented a version of Home Depot's strategic plan at the recent Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference. CEO Bob Nardelli has recently made himself available for media interviews. Bad publicity had reached such high levels that Home Depot did the previously unthinkable. Nardelli called HD founder and huge shareholder (at one point as many as 59 million shares) Bernie Marcus so he could say something nice about Nardelli's job performance. What Marcus said is what everybody but Nardelli already seems to recognize. Customer service is inconsistent at Home Depot stores, often bordering on abysmal. Touting various customer service initiatives such as the $30 million "Orange Juiced" program, or bragging about 5.5 million employee hours in stores for the second half of 2006 are meaningless to customers who cannot get the information and/or products they need when they are standing in the store. Lack of money is not Home Depot's problem. Lack of a customer-centered corporate culture is.

Home Depot senior management is trying to make strategic decisions. Nardelli recently announced that 300 jobs at the Atlanta HQ will be cut. But since it is not clear what those job responsibilities entail, it is equally unclear how this move will help improve the shopping experience for consumers. Recognizing the need to revamp its own corporate culture, Home Depot recently decided not to expand in Europe by acquiring Kingfisher, a UK-based home improvment chain. CEO Nardelli has indicated repeatedly that the SEC investigation into how the company accounts for stock options will have no negative material impact on Home Depot's finances. Home Depot caught a break in Chicago. Mayor Richard Daley vetoed a city council living-wage resolution that would have forced Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Target to pay up to $13 per hour in pay and benefits.

During the month of September, Home Depot intends to provide a national home show in more than 1,000 stores. Celebrities from home improvement shows will lead a number of how-to clinics. Vendors will offer in-store demonstrations of innovative products designed to save money and be energy efficient. There will also be interactive online workshops, and a virtual home tour specifically designed to show case brand new products.