Retail

Did Best Buy's Holiday Strategy Prove Effective?

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Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is scheduled to release its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results before the opening bell on Thursday. Analysts are calling for $2.75 in earnings per share (EPS) and $15.06 billion in revenue. The same period of last year reportedly had $2.72 in EPS and $14.8 billion in revenue.

The company previously issued guidance for the fourth quarter, and the company expects to see EPS in the range of $2.65 to $2.75 with Enterprise revenue in between $14.75 billion and $15.15 billion. Comparable sales are expected to grow 0.5% to 3.0%.

In the third quarter, Best Buy saw its domestic revenues grow 2.4% year over year to $8.96 billion. The increase was driven by comparable sales growth of 2.0% and revenue from GreatCall, which was acquired in the third quarter of last year.

Keeping pace in the e-commerce world, domestic online revenue increased 15% to $1.4 billion, primarily due to higher average order values.

During the holiday shopping season, Best Buy offered free next-day delivery on thousands of items all season long with no membership or minimum purchase required. Customers could also choose to pick up their products in a store within an hour of placing their order. The fourth-quarter numbers will be the judge of whether this strategy proved effective.

Excluding Wednesday’s move, Best Buy stock had outperformed the broad markets with a gain of about 35% in the past 52 weeks. In just the past quarter alone, the share price is up roughly 13%.

A few analysts weighed in on Best Buy ahead of the report:

  • Nomura has a Hold rating and an $81 price target.
  • Oppenheimer has a Buy rating with a $105 price target.
  • Morgan Stanley rates it as Equal Weight with an $85 target.
  • Guggenheim has a Buy rating with a $100 target price.
  • The Jefferies Buy rating comes with a $101 price target.

Best Buy stock traded up about 3% at $84.42 on Wednesday, in a 52-week range of $61.58 to $91.99. The consensus price target is $89.68.


 

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