Best Buy Quarterly Earnings Nosedive

On Tuesday (November 20), Best Buy reported quarterly earnings that missed even the already lowered expectations for profit, though revenue was somewhat better than estimates.  The company said its third-quarter net loss was $13 million, or 4 cents a share, compared with year-earlier net earnings of $173 million, or 47 cents a share.

Excluding restructuring charges, the company earned 3 cents a share and its revenue fell to $10.75 billion during the quarter from $11.145 billion the previous year.

Analysts had expected Best Buy to report earnings excluding items of 12 cents a share on $10.73 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters consensus estimates.

The news came mere days before the unofficial start of the holiday season, and amid a wide organizational restructuring under new CEO Hubert Joly, as well a looming buyout proposal by founder Richard Schulze.

As previously reported in MMR and elsewhere, some speculate that Best Buy’s retail outlets are hurting because they have become “showrooms” for shoppers who then make actual purchases on Amazon.com and other online vendors.

Back in late August, we noted that Best Buy’s 2Q profits had dropped 90 percent.

Best Buy – by some standards of measurement, the nations second largest MI chain, based on the operation’s “music store within a store” model – saw shares (BBY) drop 8 percent in trading immediately following the news on Tuesday.