Borders reports quarterly earnings after the close of the market today and analysts are expecting a weak report–it’s just a question of how bad it will be. The consensus expectation is a loss of 29 cents a share, and the group guess on sales comes in at $783 million, which would be more than 17 percent below second quarter results from a year ago. As one site notes, however, “Borders has a very mixed earnings history – missing targets twice out of the last four quarters while exceeding them twice as well. The only obviously lesson here is expect volatility, […]
Booksellers
BN Continuing to Develop Digital Products
In yesterday’s conference call following their earnings reports, BN ceo Steve Riggio answered an analyst’s question about the chain’s plans for new technology and the marketplace: “We began selling digital magazines earlier this year on the website. We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing there and like with all new strategic developments of any type, we will announce it on the day that we launch but we can’t really make any further comments on anything that we will be doing or might be doing, it’s just so highly strategic…. We do not believe that eBooks is the total universe of […]
Big Comp Drop at Books-A-Million
Putting Barnes & Noble’s results in context–and perhaps showing how deep the weakness in the consumer book market is running–Books-A-Million reported a same-store sales drop of 10.4 percent for their second quarter, on sales of $122.8 million. Income declined even more, with the company recording just $645,000, compared with net income of $3.1 million a year ago. CEO Sandra Cochran notes in the release: “Very challenging macro economic trends and tough comparisons to last year due to the record-breaking sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows led to disappointing comparable store sales for the quarter.”Release
Falling Sales, Outlook at B&N
The lack of a comparable book sales-wise to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – even with the success of Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn, the Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture – took an expected toll on Barnes & Noble’s second quarter earnings. Total sales for Barnes & Noble declined 2% to $1.22 billion. Store sales were off 1.6%, to $1.1 billion, while sales through Barnes & Noble.com increased 3.6% to $99.8 million. Comparable store sales fell 4.7% at the physical stores in the period. Excluding prior year sales of the Harry Potter […]
Harper Finishes with Strong Quarter
HarperCollins reported fourth quarter sales of $350 million, up nearly 18 percent from $295 million a year ago, with operating income of $28 million up a third from a year ago. In the release the company says the quarter was “led by strong sales of Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey [which has sales as tracked by Nielsen Bookscan of under 60,000 copies], Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall, an updated edition of YOU:The Owner’s Manual by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet Oz” and bestsellers like Read All About It! by Laura and Jenna Bush–leaving unresolved the question of what actually […]
Indigo Rises in First Quarter
Sales at dominant Canadian chain Indigo rose 3.1 percent in their first quarter to $191 million (CA), while their net loss was reduced by more than half, to $1.3 million. Same-store sales were up 3.3 percent at the Indigo and Chapters superstores, while the smaller format Coles stores were up 5.4 percent, and online sales rose 7.7 percent, to $21 million. Release