Best Buy Gets Crushed By Its Future

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Best Buy Gets Crushed By Its Future

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Electronics retailer Best Buy has already been on the ropes because of recent earnings disappointments and deep concerns about future quarters. It turns out that concerns were well founded. Best Buy announced it would get badly beaten, primarily because of inflation. A recession will not help.

The worst of its new forecast is that full-year same-store sales will drop 11% compared with previous forecasts of a 3% to 6% drop for the next fiscal year. Best Buy will end share buybacks, but will keep its quarterly dividend intact at $0.88 per share. It is cold comfort.

Corie Barry, Best Buy CEO, made a curious statement. “While our financial results are not where we expected them to be this year, our sales continue to be higher than they were pre-pandemic.” Given how badly the COVID-19 pandemic crippled brick-and-mortar retail sales one would hope so.

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Best Buy continues to show it cannot accurately predict its future. The problem has been based on unfounded optimism. Investors can only hope the latest figures are right. Best Buy said it would provide investors more details when it releases earnings on Aug. 30. Hopefully, these will not include an even worse forecast.

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Best Buy’s shares have already fallen 27% this year. The announcement will drop them even more.

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The news begs one more question. CEO Barry has held her job since June 2019. The members of Best Buy’s board have to be asking themselves how long poor results and inaccurate forecasts can go on. Shareholders deserve better.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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