Barnes & Noble reported results for the fiscal third quarter ending January 30 — including the big holiday period when the company makes most of its money for the year. Sales of $1.414 billion were down $26 million (or 1.8 percent), “due to lower online sales and store closures” on the retail side, plus the unstoppable decline of Nook. Retail sales, at BN stores and BN.com, fell 1.2 percent overall — but same store sales were up, barely, 0.2 percent on “the continued strength of adult coloring books, as well as our Toys & Games, music and gift businesses.” That’s in line […]
Booksellers
Corporate: Chegg Drops, KU In China, and the Barnes & Noble Prototype
Chegg‘s fourth quarter sales were down 19 percent to $68 million and below what analysts were expecting — and their forecast for Q1 and all of 2016 also shows sales declining, once again below analysts’ expectations, as the company continues its pivot to focus on student services and outsource textbook rentals to Ingram in exchange for commission revenue. Investors evacuated the stock on the news on Tuesday, sending shares down over 35 percent to their lowest point yet (dropping about $1.90 a share). Shares have rebounded some in Wednesday morning trading, regaining about 50 cents a share. China Daily reports […]
Rakuten Takes Big Impairment Charge On Kobo
Last Friday Rakuten reported fourth quarter full-year 2015 results. In connection with that report, they took 38.1 billion yen in impairment charges (roughly $332 million), including a significant charge against the Kobo division of 7.8 billion yen (roughly $68 million). The company said that Kobo “has been impacted by a slower start to the rise of the global ebook industry than we originally expected, and hence its business plan fell behind original targets.” At the same time, Rakuten said that OverDrive’s financial performance “has been rapidly improving.” They added that “as a result, we expect EBITDA of our ebook business including […]
On Cue: Waterstones’ Annual Retreat From Forecasts of Profit
Waterstones has filed financial results for the fiscal year through April 2015, and managing director James Daunt is engaging in his annual dance of walking back the bold proclamations he made to an always-eager press during the important holiday sales period. Amazingly, our analysis right now is exactly the same as what we said a year ago. Here are the facts: According to the company’s records filed with the UK’s Companies House, sales for the year ending April 2015 were £378 million, as the company lost money again — albeit with losses reduced to £1.9 million after taxes. The Bookseller says that […]
Indigo Celebrates Big Holiday Quarter
Canada’s dominant physical bookseller Indigo reported fiscal third quarter sales, through December 26, with revenue up 12.9 percent to $383 million (a $44 million gain), and net earnings of $52.8 million, up sharply from $33 million a year ago. Those gains came even though the chain had one less superstore and four fewer small-format stores than in the same period a year ago. The company had “high single digit growth in the core book business due to a combination of popular titles and a growing trend for adult coloring books” and even better “double digit growth in the general merchandise business,” which […]
Amazon Grows, But Profits Aren’t Enough for Traders
Amazon reported fourth quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday, with revenues growing 22 percent to $35.7 billion, and net income of $482 million in the fourth quarter, or $1.00 per diluted share. While those sound like strong results (record results, even), analysts were expecting slightly higher sales ($35.98 billion) and much stronger earnings of $1.58 per share, so the stock is down — falling about 9 percent first thing Friday after having risen on Thursday ahead of the earnings announcement. The AWS unit generated $687 million in operating income (while the entire company had $1.1 billion of operating income in […]