Barnes & Noble announced second quarter earnings this morning, which we are going to look at from a few perspectives. From a Wall Street vantage point, this was a poor report. Sales were $90 million lower than analysts were expecting, and the company reported a 17-cent-per-share loss, while investors were anticipating a 3-cent-per-share gain. (The company also revealed that the preferred dividend to Liberty Media cost regular shareholders 6 cents a share this quarter.) After a big run-up over the past 15 trading days, investors are pounding Barnes & Noble’s stock again, down almost 20 percent in morning trading, back […]
Finance
Upgrade Continues Barnes & Noble’s Stock Boost
Barnes & Noble’s rekindled romance with Wall Street, now entering its tenth trading day, continues apace. Their stock registered resilient gains again yesterday even as the overall market suffered, and it is rising again today, passing the $18 mark in early trading, as another analyst–Gary Balter at Credit Suisse–has upgraded revenue estimates and raised his price target for the stock to $20 a share. Beyond BN’s own guidance that the Nook business will comprise $1.8 billion in the current fiscal year, Credit Suisse projects that segment will grow to $2.25 billion in the following year, and $2.813 billion the year […]
Upgrade Boosts Barnes & Noble Again
At yesterday’s presentation at Liberty Media’s annual meeting, Barnes & Noble’s William Lynch basically repeated the market predictions and assessments that he’s been making to anyone who would listen. It was an afternoon upgrade from Stifel Niclaus that sent the company’s stock soaring again in early afternoon trading yesterday. Analyst David Schick is coming to believe the company’s contention that it is turning into a technology company, and he set a price target of $25 a share (or 50 percent above current levels). As we suggested earlier, Rakuten’s valuation of Kobo implies that Barnes & Noble’s Nook business should be […]
Houghton to Close Current Trade Warehouse, and Fire More Execs
In another memo, reproduced at GalleyCat, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ceo Linda Zecher tells staff that the company will close its Indianapolis West warehouse next spring, which services the trade and reference division. But those products won’t move far; they will be transferred to the company’s Indianapolis East warehouse. Zecher says it’s “part of the broader reduction in our workforce” that the FT said could comprise 10 percent of the company’s employees in all. On top the last week’s executive departures and division closings, Zecher writes that evp of Innovation and New Ventures Fiona O’Carroll is leaving and that team “is being […]
Borders Creditors Will Get Only 4 to 10 Cents On the Dollar
Borders’ current plan for Chapter 11 liquidation proceedings got a preliminary go-ahead in federal bankruptcy court Monday afternoon, when Judge Martin Glenn signed off on the company’s explanatory disclosure statement of their liquidation program. Borders currently expects to pay unsecured creditors somewhere between 4 and 10 percent of the $812 million to $850 million they are owed. Among other items gleaned from the documents: at some point “during the course of these cases,” Perseus resigned from the creditors committee (as did Sony Music). Borders continues to insist that they “intend to market [their] Kobo stock for sale.” They hold roughly 9.9 percent […]
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to Restructure, Eliminate
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ceo Linda K. Zecher announced in an internal memo ahead of a Monday investor call that she will restructure the company’s divisions as well as its executive ranks, “for better accountability with fewer senior leaders and more focus on our customers.” The company “we will no longer have a separate Education Group” and its current president, Mike Lavelle “has made the decision to leave HMH.” Company CFO (and one-time interim ceo) Michael Muldowney has resigned, with Eric Shuman taking the roll of interim cfo. They will also eliminate the Emerging Markets division and are restructuring their corporate […]