• Home Depot said retail theft continues to be a challenge.
• CFO Richard McPhail said the operating environment was “getting tougher”.
• However, the executive said investments to tackle shoplifting and organized theft were “paying off”.

Shoplifting and organized retail crime were a dominant story in retail last year.

While the issue hasn’t made as many headlines this year, Home Depot said the problem hasn’t gone away.

“This is a problem for all retailers,” CFO Richard McPhail said Tuesday during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. “It’s hard to quantify.”

“Our investments are paying off,” he added. “That doesn’t mean the operating environment is getting easier. In fact, it’s getting harder.”

In other words, casual thieves and organized criminals continue to be a thorn in Home Depot’s side—only now they’re better managed, according to the CFO.

The company said its anti-decline efforts improved its profit margin for the quarter by nearly half a percentage point. Home Depot made more than $40 billion in sales last quarter.

“It’s a day-to-day initiative that our teams struggle with every day,” McPhail said.

Home Depot has been both a prominent target and opponent of organized retail theft in recent years.

The company’s vice president of asset protection, Scott Glenn, previously told BI that the company wants to strike a balance between securing goods and enabling customers to get what they need.

“We certainly don’t want to affect the 99.5 percent of our customers who are just there to pick up their hammers and nails,” Glenn said. “We don’t want to look like an armed camp.”

A solution to the puzzle: power tools that don’t work unless they’re activated at the point of sale.

Glenn also highlighted at the time the difference between solo thieves and “professional thieves” he said they are often connected to a larger network.

Last year, a The Florida pastor was charged with running a criminal retail ring responsible for stealing $3 million worth of merchandise from the chain.

Earlier this year, Court Watch obtained the latest in a string of indictments against accused defendants renting heavy machinery from Home Depot and selling it instead of returning it.

Prosecutors in those cases and others cited input from Home Depot’s internal investigators as helpful in identifying the suspects.

In September, the company highlighted some of its ongoing efforts to tackle retail crime in its stores, including its support for federal legislation that would help centralize and coordinate an interstate response.

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