Why Best Buy Investors Are Unimpressed With Earnings Beat

Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) reported its fiscal first-quarter financial results before the markets opened on Tuesday. The company said it had $0.44 in earnings per share (EPS) on $8.44 billion in revenue. That compares to consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters of $0.35 in EPS on revenue of $8.29 billion. In the same period of last year, the retailer posted EPS of $0.37 and $8.56 billion in revenue.

In a separate release, the company announced that its chief financial officer, Sharon McCollam, will be stepping down effective June 14. However, she will remain with the company in an advisory capacity until the end of the fiscal year, January 28, 2017. Corie Barry, a 16-year veteran of Best Buy and its current chief strategic growth officer, will become the company’s CFO at the conclusion of Best Buy’s annual shareholder meeting, held on June 14.

One metric that most investors are looking at is Best Buy’s Domestic online revenue, and how that might compare to other competitors, including the likes of Amazon. Domestic online revenue for the quarter totaled $832 million and increased 23.9% on a comparable basis, primarily due to higher conversion rates and increased traffic. As a percentage of total Domestic revenue, online revenue increased 210 basis points to 10.6%, versus 8.5% last year.

In terms of guidance for the fiscal second quarter, Best Buy expects to have EPS in the range of $0.38 to $0.42 and for enterprise revenue to fall between $8.35 billion and $8.45 billion. The consensus estimates call for $0.50 in EPS.
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Back in February, Best Buy announced its intent to repurchase $1 billion of its shares over a two-year period. In this quarter, the company repurchased 3.2 million shares for a total of $97 million.

Hubert Joly, chairman and CEO of Best Buy, commented:

Our teams delivered a strong first quarter, with better-than-expected revenue, improved profitability and progress against our fiscal 2017 initiatives. We are reaffirming our previously provided full year financial outlook which includes approximately flat revenue and non-GAAP operating income, with non-GAAP EPS growth driven by share repurchases. Although we are reporting better-than-expected results today, we are not raising our full year outlook as the first quarter represents less than 15% of full year earnings and at this stage we have no new material information as it relates to product launches throughout the year.

On the books, Best Buy’s cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled $3.07 billion at the end of the quarter, compared to $3.74 billion in the same period from last year.

Shares of Best Buy closed Monday up 2% at $33.00, with a consensus analyst price target of $34.36 and a 52-week trading range of $25.31 to $39.10. Following the release of the earnings report, the stock was down over 5% at $31.25 in early trading indications Tuesday.