Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) will report its third-quarter earnings Thursday before the market open. Thomson Reuters has consensus estimates of $0.24 in earnings per share and $9.08 billion in revenue. The third quarter from the previous year had $0.18 in earnings per share and $9.36 billion in revenue.

Holiday spending on consumer electronics gear like smartphones, tablets and game controllers is expected to increase 2.5% year-over-year in 2014 and total $33.76 billion. The most wanted products are tablets, followed by laptop/notebook computers, TVs, smartphones and game consoles.

These five products are expected to account for more than 51% of all spending on consumer electronics gear for all of 2014, or about $108.8 billion of $211.3 billion in total sales. The data come from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). This is good news for Best Buy as a major retailer of consumer electronics.

For the coming Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Best Buy plans to open at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving and at 8 a.m. on Black Friday.

On Monday Stifel maintained a Buy rating for Best Buy and raised its price target to $42 from $35. RBC Capital Markets also raised its price target to $40 from $36 and had an Outperform rating.

Over the weekend it was reported that Richard Schulze sold 500,000 shares at $35.41 per share for roughly $17.7 million as part of a 10b5-1 share sale plan.

Shares of Best Buy were trading near even at $35.50 Monday with two hours left in regular trading. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $35.78 and a 52-week trading range of $22.15 to $44.35. The market cap is around $12 billion.

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