Barnes & Noble Beats Forecasts on Fifty Shades of Grey Sales

Updated on

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s (NYSE:BKS) reported first-quarter loss narrowed on account of higher sales from same-store, due to liquidation of Borders’ bookstores and strong sales of the Fifty Shades of Grey series. The book has been an unbelievable best-seller.

Stifel Nicholas has some interesting notes on the report (plus the graph below):

Barnes & Noble Beats Forecasts on Fifty Shades of Grey Sales

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) posted a loss of $41 million, or 78 cents a share for the quarter ending July 28, compared with a loss of $56.6 million, or 99 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter, increased by 2.5 percent to $1.45 billion, beats analyst estimates of a loss of 98 cents on revenue of $1.48 billion. Revenues from company’s retail segment, which includes bookstores and its Internet business, jumped 2 percent to $1.12 billion and same-store sales were up 4.6%.  Sales from college bookstore were up slightly to $221 million, while college same-store sales fell 2%. The retailer’s gross margin was up slightly to 28.5% from 27.3%. Revenues from Nook were almost flat at $192 million, with a 46 percent increase in content sales, while revenues from the device fell, due to lower average selling prices, total inventory registered a 7.3 percent increase over the same period last year.

“During the first quarter, we continued to see improvement in both our rapidly growing NOOK business, which saw digital content sales increase 46% during the quarter, and at our bookstores, which continue to benefit from market consolidation and strong sales of the Fifty Shades series,” Chief Executive William Lynch said.

With declining revenues from traditional book sales,  Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS)’s Nook digital-book has gain immense importance for the Barnes & Noble. The bookseller expected a strong demand, and shipped Simple Touch with GlowLight ahead of schedule in April, and also introduced Nook for the Web in July, which allows users to access full books on their devices without having to sign-in to a Nook account or perform a software download. Expecting high prospects, software giant, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) also announced in April this year to invest at least $605 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook business. In lieu of investments software maker will hold a 17.6% stake in a subsidiary that will include the e-book division and Barnes & Noble’s college bookstore unit. The book store has been investing heavily in the Nook business to compete with the players like Amazon.com, Inc.  (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), just last week it slashed the prices for its color tablets to beat the competition.

 

Barnes & Noble is the world’s largest operator of bookstores. As January 2011, it had a network of 704 BKS stores and 636 College bookstores covering every US state.

 

Leave a Comment