The company 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. In the third quarter of the previous year, the retailer posted $0.18 in earnings per share and revenue of $9.36 billion.
comScore forecast that the November-December period of this year will have spending of about $61 billion, a 16% increase from the spending in 2013.
The research firm also expects that spending involving the use of desktop computers for the 2014 November-December period will reach $53.2 billion, a gain of 14% from the previous year. Mobile commerce is forecast to come in at $7.9 billion of retail spending, a larger gain of 25% from last season.
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The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) also had some predictions for what will come in the holiday season. 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. Ultimately this is good news for Best Buy as a leading retailer of consumer electronics.
Best Buy, along with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), have both rejected the Apple Pay system that was pioneered for the new iPhone 6. Both stores support a different payment system being developed by a retailer-owned mobile technology outfit called Merchant Customer Exchange and its CurrentC mobile app, which starts testing this month before being rolled out nationwide next year.
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’s stock and raised its price target to $42 from $35 in the call. RBC Capital Markets also raised its price target to $40 from $36 and had an Outperform rating.
Shares of Best Buy were up about 0.5% at $35.10 in the first hour of trading. The consensus analyst price target is $36.87, and the 52-week trading range is $22.15 to $43.19. Best Buy has a market cap of over $12 billion.
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