Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) was the primary whipping boy for Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) success as the destroyer of brick-and-mortar retailers. It would be hard to support that argument today. Best Buy’s share price has risen 43% in the past year to Amazon’s 5%.
Among the reasons Amazon has done so badly is Wall Street’s impression that Jeff Bezos cares more about gadgets like drones and little about cost control. The evidence of that is supported by Amazon’s fourth-quarter earnings. Revenue rose 15% to $29.3 billion. The growth was light for a holiday quarter, and net income only reached $214 million, compared with $239 million in the same quarter. Guidance for the current quarter was also disappointing:
Net sales are expected to be between$20.9 billion and $22.9 billion, or to grow between 6% and 16% compared with first quarter 2014.
- Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(450) million and $50 million, compared to $146 million in first quarter 2014.
- This guidance includes approximately $450 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded and that there are no further revisions to stock-based compensation estimates.
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Bezos has launched a smartphone, the Fire Phone, which was a very public failure. Investors are still not sure if Amazon’s Prime services, which include free movie streaming and some measure of free shipping for most items bought on America’s largest e-commerce site, makes money. The service is priced at $99 a year. Also, Amazon Web Services, the cloud operation, faces substantial competition from big tech rivals.
Best Buy did not post impressive numbers for the holidays, but at least they were stable after several years of weakness and turmoil that cost one chief executive and the founding chairman their jobs. Revenue for the nine weeks that ended January 3 reached $11.4 billion, up a very modest amount from $11.1 billion.
Best Buy may have found that a combination of online sales and aggressive in-store pricing has saved it from what was, in most minds, a catastrophe.
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