Barnes & Noble reported more improving sales through its retail stores for the holiday season. For the nine week period ended January 3, 2015, sales through its retail physical stores, plus BN.com, rose 0.2%, hitting $1.1 billion. Comparable store sales fell 0.6%, but excluding Nook products, core comp sales were up 1.7%.
Total sales benefited from an extra week of sales in the just-concluded period, compared to the 2013 holiday season, but the company said the extra week did not affect comp store sale comparisons.
B&N said sales "benefited from the continued stabilization of physical book sales and growth in the educational toys and games and gift departments.” Those gains offset weakness in Nook sales, and the impact of store closings.
“We were very pleased with our overall holiday sales results," said Mike Huseby, CEO of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "Our core comparable bookstore sales were better than our expectations, even as we cycled against the improved core sales trends that began this period a year ago.” The company has said that it plans to close 15 to 20 stores in the fiscal year ending in April and there was no indication Thursday that B&N will deviate from that plan despite improved physical store sales.
Sales in the Nook segment fell, with revenue from devices and accessories falling 67.9%, to $56 million and sales of digital content down 25.0%, to $27.4 million compared to the nine week period a year ago. While the drop in hardware was expected the continued decline in digital content remains a trouble spot for B&N since it has stake its long-term future on the sale of physical and digital content.
Based on the better than expected retail core comp bookstore sales performance, B&N now expects full-year retail core comps to be approximately flat; B&N had expected decline in the low single digits. The company maintained its outlook on total retail comparable bookstore sales to decline in the low-single digits, College comparable store sales to decline in the low-single digits and full fiscal year EBITDA losses in the Nook segment to decline versus the prior year.
