Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) reports fourth-quarter and full-year results before markets open Thursday morning, but the company has reportedly already begun a cost-cutting program that could result in the firing of more than 2,000 managers at its more than 1,000 U.S. stores. The New York Post also reported that the company does not plan to close more stores in this round of cost-cutting.

According to “insiders” cited by the Post some 500 field managers were let go last week and store level managers will get the bad news by next week.

The firings shouldn’t be a big surprise. It’s about all that Best Buy has left to do besides close stores. In January the store said the sales were down 0.9% year-over-year for the nine weeks ending January 4th. The company also said it expected to report declining operating profit. The shares lost nearly 29% that day.

The stock is down nearly 33% since January 15th, the day before that announcement. Best Buy had said going into the holiday shopping season that it would compete on price with any online or brick-and-mortar store. That strategy clearly failed and we’ll get the details tomorrow. Analysts are looking for quarterly earnings per share of $1.01 on revenues of $14.66 billion. Just two months ago the earnings per share estimate was $1.61. If Best Buy misses, tomorrow will be a bloodbath. It already is for 500 of the company’s former managers and soon will be for more than 1,000 others.

As with all big layoffs, shares are up nearly 2.5% at $25.91 in a 52-week range of $15.75 to $44.66.

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