Lowe's missed Wall Street forecasts for quarterly sales on Wednesday as a long winter hit demand for outdoor products, but the home improvement retailer maintained its annual financial targets on expectations that demand will recover.

Many U.S. retailers have said that a late start to the spring selling season has weighed on sales of lawn-mowers, patio furniture, and other seasonal products during the February-April period.

Still, Lowe's Chief Executive Officer Robert Niblock said in a statement he was "encouraged by strong sales in the month of May."

Shares of Lowe's, the No. 2 U.S. home improvement chain, rose 3 percent to $88.30 in premarket trading, despite the company's lower-than-expected comparable-store sales for the first quarter.

Sales at Lowe's stores open at least a year rose 0.6 percent in the three months ended May 4, while analysts on average had expected a 3.06 percent increase, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"While certainly a touch disappointing, (Lowe's report) wasn't a big surprise to us. We believe most of the (comparable-store sales) pressure to be more transitory in nature than structural," Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom said.