Retail

Why Best Buy Stock Is Soaring After Earnings

Paul Ausick

Published: August 23, 2016 7:50 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:22 am

Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) reported fiscal 2017 second-quarter results before markets opened Tuesday. The big-box retailer of electronics gear reported adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.57 and $8.53 billion in revenues. In the same period a year ago, Best Buy reported EPS of $0.49 on revenue of $8.53 billion. Second-quarter results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.43 and $8.4 billion in revenue.

Enterprise level same-store sales rose 0.8% year over year in the quarter after rising by 3.8% in the second quarter last year. In the United States, same-store sales rose by the same amount. Online comparable sales rose nearly 24%.

Domestic online sales of $835 million in the quarter accounted for 10.6% of revenue.

Operating income rose 3.4% on an adjusted basis and by the same amount on a GAAP basis. Diluted GAAP EPS from continuing operations came in at $0.56, compared with $0.46 in the year-ago quarter.

The company’s chairman and CEO, Hubert Joly, said:

Our teams delivered a strong second quarter, with better-than-expected revenue and profitability in both our Domestic and International businesses. … We are encouraged by the quality of our execution, the momentum in our business and the strength of our first half financial results.

Chief Financial Officer Corie Barry got to deliver the outlook:

For our Q3 FY17 guidance, we are expecting Enterprise revenue in the range of $8.8 billion to $8.9 billion, or flat to 1% growth. We anticipate both Enterprise and Domestic comparable sales growth of approximately 1%. We expect International revenue to be approximately flat to down 5% on a reported basis and to be approximately flat on a constant currency basis. … As it relates to our full year financial outlook, we are reaffirming our expectation of approximately flat revenue and raising our full year non-GAAP operating income outlook. We continue to expect the slight revenue decline in the first half to be offset by slight growth in the back half and in light of our first half performance, we are now expecting a full year non-GAAP operating income3 growth rate in the low-single digits versus our previous expectation of approximately flat. This includes lapping the significant periodic profit sharing benefits from our services plan portfolio that we earned in fiscal 2016.

Best Buy expects adjusted diluted EPS in a range of $0.43 to $0.47 for the third quarter. Analysts are expecting third-quarter EPS of $0.45 on sales of $8.77 billion. For the full fiscal year, analysts have forecast EPS at $2.87 on sales of $39.27 billion.

The unexpected increase in same-store sales and strong growth in online sales boosted the share price Tuesday morning. Shares were up more than 14% at $37.50 in the premarket, in a 52-week range of $25.31 to $39.10. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of $32.91 before results were announced, with a high target of $45.00. The stock closed at $32.80 on Monday.