S&P 500
7,226.20
+0.01%
Dow Jones
49,494.60
-0.62%
Nasdaq 100
27,685.40
+0.66%
Russell 2000
2,804.78
-0.02%
FTSE 100
10,364.50
0.00%
Nikkei 225
59,260.50
-0.78%

Media

Blockbuster, Staggered, Loses Its Footing

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Blockbuster, Inc (NYSE: BBI), nearly ruined by the high cost of its store network and withering from competition from NetFlix (NYSE: NFLX) and the kiosk operator Redbox, posted another quarter of dismal results. The rental chain’s net loss for the first quarter of 2010 was $65.4 million, or $0.33 per share, compared to net income of $27.7 million, or $0.12 per share, in the first quarter of 2009. Revenues for the period was $939.4 million, compared to $1.09 billion for the period a year ago.

Worldwide same-store sales for the first quarter of 2010 declined 7.1%.

The stock fell over 17% after hours.

Blockbuster’s initiatives to save itself are almost certainly too little, to late. In a partnership with NCR it has opened 4,000 rental kiosks. Redbox has over 25,000. Blockbuster also has an untried partnership to download content to T-Mobile’s HTC HD2 smart-phones. Premium films and TV have been available on handsets for several years, but the business has been slow to gain ground.

Blockbuster is still burdened by its operation of 4,914 stores. Its major competition is from relatively lower cost DVD-by-film, digital download, and kiosk operations.

What was true last year is still true at the end of its most recently reported quarter. Blockbuster has no future.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

Continue Reading

Douglas A. McIntyre |

Coinstar: The Next Blockbuster

Courtesy Coinstar Inc.Stock analysts and investors assume that because one business model is better than another, the better business model…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Netflix Crushes Redbox

Coinstar (NASDAQ: CSTR) said that sales results from its Redbox kiosks were below expectations. That caused the company to revise…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Nine Big Companies That Grew Through The Recession

The recession that began in 2007, and by some accounts is only barely over now, shut down and largely reversed…
Jon C. Ogg |

Blockbuster Can’t Reduce Debt, Faces Bankruptcy (BBI, NFLX, WMT, NCR)

When Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE:BBI) filed its 2009 annual report in March, it included the dreaded “going concern” sentence, indicating that…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

DVD Sales Crushed By Rentals, As Apple (AAPL) And Amazon (AMZN) Rise

DVD sales are flagging and rentals are up, news which is likely to be unwelcome at the major movie studios.…
Paul Ausick |

Watching Movies at Home Beats Going to Theaters (NFLX, CSTR, AMZN, DISH, WMT, SNE)

In 1999, about 92% of $13.2 billion in home entertainment spending went to VHS tapes.That percentage fell to zero in…
Paul Ausick |

Does Redbox Rental Price Increase Help Netflix?

Outerwall Inc.In early October the streaming video joint venture between Redbox video kiosk company Outerwall Inc. (NASDAQ: OUTR) and Verizon…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Blockbuster Pursues Its Last Chance

Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) has failed in the online DVD rental business and movie internet streaming business. The traffic to its thousands…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

The New Generation Of American Monopolies

A monopoly is either what the government says it is or what a dominant company’s competitors claim. The government’s opinion…

Top Gaining Stocks

Cboe Global Markets
CBOE • Vol: 1,568,143
New Pluto Global
PSKY • Vol: 12,285,993
Seagate Technology
STX • Vol: 7,378,346
Oracle
ORCL • Vol: 26,317,675
Datadog
DDOG • Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ • Vol: 4,367,433
Clorox
CLX • Vol: 13,260,523
Stryker
SYK • Vol: 4,519,455
Mohawk Industries
MHK • Vol: 1,859,865
Amgen
AMGN • Vol: 3,818,618