Barnes & Noble Revenue Falls Further as Nook Sales Falter
By Aditi Shrivastava
and Neha Alawadhi
Barnes & Noble, the largest U.S. bookstore chain, reported an 8 percent drop in quarterly revenue as sales fell across all its businesses, including its stores and Nook e-readers and e-books.
Barnes & Noble (BKS) shares fell 3.8 percent to $15.80 in premarket trading, with the sliding revenue highlighting again the bookseller's battle with giant Internet rival Amazon.com (AMZN).
The Nook sold well after its launch in 2009, but the e-reader hasn't kept pace with aggressively priced Kindles from Amazon, along with rival tablets from Apple (AAPL) and others.
Revenue in the Nook business, including e-books and devices, fell 32.2 percent to $108.7 million as Barnes & Noble sold fewer e-readers and slashed prices.
The company has lost hundreds of millions of dollars trying to compete with e-readers from large tech companies. %VIRTUAL-article-sponsoredlinks%This year it said it would only make more tablets if it found a partner.
Overall revenue fell to $1.73 billion in the second quarter from $1.88 billion a year earlier. Net profit jumped to $13.2 million from $501,000 a year earlier, after the company cut costs in the face of the falling revenue. Factoring in preferred stock dividends and accretion of dividends on preferred stock, Barnes & Noble posted net profit of 15 cents a share, compared with a loss of 7 cents a share a year earlier.
Analysts on average were expecting a loss of 3 cents a share on revenue of $1.77 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
At Barnes & Noble book stores, sales at outlets open at least 15 months fell 4.9 percent. Barnes & Noble said it still expected retail sales to fall by a high single digit percentage in its current financial year to April 2014.
The retailer has seen turmoil in its top ranks this year. CEO William Lynch, the architect of Barnes & Noble's failed Nook strategy, quit and founder and Chairman Leonard Riggio withdrew a bid to buy the chain's retail business.
