During fiscal 2023, we opened eight new stores in the U.S. and five new stores in Mexico, resulting in a total store count of 2,335 at January 28, 2024.

Online sales, which consist of sales generated online through our websites and mobile applications for products picked up at our stores or delivered to customer locations, represented 14.8% of net sales and increased by 1.1% during fiscal 2023 compared to fiscal 2022.

The combination of reinvesting in the business to drive higher sales and supporting productivity to lower costs allows us to improve our customer experience, increase our competitiveness in the market, and deliver shareholder value. We also focused on driving productivity throughout the business by lowering our product and transportation costs and initiating a plan to reduce our fixed cost structure by approximately $500 million, which we expect will be realized in fiscal 2024.

We also focused on driving productivity throughout the business by lowering our product and transportation costs and initiating a plan to reduce our fixed cost structure by approximately $500 million, which we expect will be realized in fiscal 2024.

We continually strive to improve our store operations to remove complexity and inefficient processes, allowing our associates to spend more of their time serving our customers. To this end, we have continued to focus on process improvements like optimizing product flow to improve on-shelf product availability and thus decrease the amount of time store associates spend locating products; creating a simpler order management system; expanding in-aisle, real-time mobile learning tools for our associates' own development and to assist with customer questions; and using labor model tools to better align associate activity with customer needs.

In October 2023, we announced changes to our leadership structure, aligning our outside sales and service business with our global store organization to better serve our Pros by leveraging our full ecosystem and newest capabilities.

Intense competitive pressures from one or more of our competitors, such as through aggressive promotional pricing or liquidation events, or our inability to adapt effectively and quickly to a changing competitive landscape, could adversely affect our prices, our margins, or demand for our products and services.

Our customers and associates expect a safe store environment in which to shop and work, and maintaining that environment helps protect against loss or theft of our inventory (also called "shrink"). Like other retailers, we have seen an increase in shrink in recent years, particularly as a result of organized retail crime.

Disruption within our logistics or supply chain network, such as the industry-wide supply chain challenges that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, have in the past and may in the future adversely affect our ability to receive and deliver inventory in a timely manner, impair our ability to meet customer demand for products, and result in lost sales, increased supply chain costs, and/or damage to our reputation.

The Home Depot, Inc. is the world's largest home improvement retailer based on net sales for fiscal 2023.

Our industry is highly competitive, fragmented, and evolving. As a result, we face competition for customers for our products and services from a variety of retailers, suppliers, service providers, and distributors and manufacturers that sell products directly to their respective customer bases. These competitors range from traditional brick-and-mortar, to multichannel, to exclusively online, and they include a number of other home improvement retailers; local, regional and national hardware stores; electrical, plumbing and building materials supply houses; and lumber yards.

We believe our merchandising organization is a key competitive advantage, delivering product innovation, assortment and value, which reinforces our position as the product authority in home improvement.

We continually strive to improve our store operations to remove complexity and inefficient processes, allowing our associates to spend more of their time serving our customers.

We continue to focus on building best-in-class competitive advantages in our supply chain to be responsive to our customers' expectations for how, when and where they choose to receive our products and services.

Our inventory turnover ratio was 4.3 times at the end of fiscal 2023, compared to 4.2 times at the end of fiscal 2022.

To help our merchandising organization keep pace with changing customer expectations and increasing desire for innovation, localization, and personalization, we are continuing to invest in tools to better leverage our data and drive a deeper level of collaboration with our supplier partners.

We continue to enhance our capabilities to provide our customers with a frictionless interconnected shopping experience across our stores, online, on the job site, and in their homes, focusing on continued investments in our website and mobile apps to enhance the digital customer experience.

Our associates have used web-enabled handheld devices to help them more efficiently meet the needs of the business and serve customers. Our current generation of these digital "hdPhone" devices offers enhanced functionality that allows associates to readily query inventory, access applications that support customer service, and assist with locating products.

In fiscal 2023, we returned over $16 billion to shareholders in the form of cash dividends and share repurchases.

On August 14, 2023, our Board of Directors approved a $15.0 billion share repurchase authorization that replaced the previous authorization of $15.0 billion, which was approved on August 18, 2022.

In fiscal 2023, we invested $3.2 billion in capital expenditures and $1.5 billion in acquisitions, and we repaid $1.3 billion of long-term debt during fiscal 2023.

In fiscal 2023, we submitted new reduction goals to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals, and we further enhanced our goal for Scope 3 emissions reductions in early fiscal 2024.

We remain committed to maintaining a safe shopping and working environment for our customers and associates. We accomplish this by creating a strong culture of safety, building on our core value of Taking Care of Our People, that starts from the top with engaged leaders who empower associates to make decisions that prioritize the safety of everyone.

One of our core values is "Giving Back," and we support our communities in a number of ways. The Home Depot Foundation focuses on improving the homes and lives of U.S. veterans, assisting communities affected by natural disasters, and training skilled tradespeople to fill the labor gap.

The decrease in comparable customer transactions reflects the impact of macroeconomic factors, including the continued shift in consumer consumption trends away from goods and towards services and the impact of a higher interest rate environment, pressuring home improvement demand.

The decrease in comparable average ticket reflects U.S. commodity price deflation, which negatively impacted average ticket by approximately 145 basis points, driven primarily by lumber. This was partially offset by inflation across several product categories, which slowed relative to prior years, along with demand for new and innovative products.

A weaker U.S. dollar positively impacted net sales by $276 million in fiscal 2023.