ATLANTA — The Home Depot Inc.’s new chief executive vowed Tuesday that changes are on the horizon amid a 28 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit, but he wasn’t quite ready to give details. Shareholders will have to wait until an investor conference next week.

CEO Frank Blake said the world’s largest home improvement store chain would rededicate itself to improving the helpfulness and knowledge of its employees, bettering the shopping environment at its stores, enhancing its products and catering more to professional customers.

Blake was mum on how he planned to achieve those familiar goals.

“These are straightforward priorities and a reasonable question would be, ’Haven’t you always been working on these?”’ Blake said of his goals.

Blake said one thing that will change is that Home Depot will be more focused than ever before on the task.

“We are past, present and future a retail business,” Blake said.

Blake said investors will soon get the answers, including the company’s financial outlook for 2007. He assured analysts that things will be different under his watch compared to that of his predecessor, Bob Nardelli, who resigned in early January amid a furor over his hefty pay and Home Depot’s lagging stock price.

Home Depot shares fell Tuesday, and they are up only slightly since the close of trading on the day Nardelli’s departure was announced.

Several analysts said they were eager to hear more from Home Depot about its future plans.

Blake said some people might question why Home Depot would consider selling its HD Supply unit, which caters to contractors, homebuilders and other business customers, when the segment has seen tremendous growth.

“If we can create more shareholder value now through a sale or otherwise, then that’s what we will do,” Blake said.

At the same time, he suggested the company was not necessarily committed to shedding the unit.

“If it turns out that the path to creating shareholder value is to hold the business, that’s what we will do,” Blake said.

He declined to discuss a timetable for making a decision on HD Supply.

Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome said in an interview Tuesday that the company plans to pump more money into improving its retail stores, though she did not provide an exact amount.

“If you take care of your customers, the numbers and the stock price takes care of itself,” Tome said.

Home Depot’s fourth-quarter profit drop came despite a 4 percent gain in overall sales. However, sales at stores open at least a year fell in the quarter.

Home Depot cited in part a slowing home improvement market amid a continued slump in the housing sector.

The results were in line with Wall Street expectations, when expenses related to severance payouts to Nardelli and four other executives who left the company in the final fiscal quarter of 2006 are excluded.

The Atlanta-based company said it earned $925 million, or 46 cents a share, for the three months ending Jan. 28, compared to a profit of $1.29 billion, or 60 cents a share, for the same period a year ago.

Excluding 4 cents per share of expense related to executive severance, the company reported earnings of 50 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting earnings of 50 cents a share, excluding one-time items.

Revenue in the quarter rose to $20.27 billion, compared to revenue of $19.49 billion recorded in the same period a year ago.

Same-store sales, measuring sales at retail stores open at least a year, declined 6.6 percent in the fourth quarter, Home Depot said. It added that total sales in its retail segment declined 2 percent in the quarter, though sales in its HD Supply unit grew more than 64 percent in the quarter, reflecting sales from acquired businesses. Home Depot said its average sales ticket in its retail segment fell to $56.27 in the fourth quarter from $57.20 in the same period a year earlier.

For all of fiscal 2006, Home Depot said it earned $5.76 billion, or $2.79 a share, compared to a profit of $5.84 billion, or $2.72 a share, for the same period a year ago. Twelve-month revenue rose to $90.84 billion, compared to $81.51 billion recorded for all of the previous year.

Nardelli resigned after six years at the helm of the company. He was replaced by Blake, who was the vice chairman of the company’s board. Nardelli received a severance package valued at about $210 million, according to the company.

At the end of the fourth quarter, Home Depot operated 2,147 retail stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico and China. Its wholesale HD Supply unit has nearly 1,000 locations.

Home Depot lost market share in several key product categories in the fourth quarter, according to Blake. There was softness in big ticket items such as special order kitchens and flooring, while there was improvement in sales of appliances, said Craig Menear, Home Depot’s senior vice president of merchandising.

Home Depot shares fell 10 cents to close at $41.34 in Tuesday trading on the New York Stock Exchange. ———

On the Net:

The Home Depot Inc.: http://www.homedepot.com