Can Best Buy Earnings Save Its Stock? (BBY, CC)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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On Wednesday we’ll get to see earnings out of Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY). The estimates from First Call are $1.65 EPS on $13.18 billion in revenues.  Next quarter estimates are $0.39 EPS on $8.58 billion in revenues. Estimates for fiscal Feb-2009 are $3.35 EPS on $43.08 billion in revenues.  These numbers may change by Wednesday morning.

Best Buy Co.’s 52-week trading range is $38.75 to $53.90. Analysts have an average price target north of $52.00 and shares closed at $40.56 on Friday.  Year-to-date, its shares are down close to 25%. We recently noted a Banc of America downgrade in the stock.

Normally we’d say to watch Circuit City (NYSE: CC) as well, but that company is so far imploded that a great Best Buy number would be interpreted as at Circuit City’s loss and a bad report from Best Buy would just imply things are bad there too.

One note that we’d like to point out is that while the stock is close to a 52-week low, these prices are close to lows not seen since mid-2005.  If $40.00 doesn’t act as a base for this electronics and appliances retail giant, then seeing this test $35.00 is not out of the realm of possibilities.  Much weak consumer spending should be factored in already, but Wall Street has been very bad in recent months of pricing in good news or bad news ahead of time.

Jon C. Ogg
March 30, 2008

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter and he can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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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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