In the past quarter, Barnes & Noble’s CEO resigned, and the company announced it would stop manufacturing tablets in-house as a way to cut heavy losses in the Nook division. So investors and others have been waiting for today’s earnings report with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity, and the bookseller’s stock was down Monday ahead of the earnings.
Tuesday morning, they got another bad earnings report: Barnes & Noble’s revenues were down 8.5 percent, to $ 1.3 billion. The Nook segment, which includes devices, digital content and accessories, fared much worse: Revenues were $ 153 million, down 20.2 percent from this time last year. Both device sales and digital content sales declined: Sales of devices and accessories were down 23.1 percent over last year, to $ 84 million, and digital content sales were $ 69 million, down 15.8 percent.
Barnes & Noble’s retail segment, which consists of its bricks-and-mortar stores and BN.com, also fared badly: Revenues were $ 1.0 billion for the quarter, down 9.9 percent over last year.
In addition, an SEC filing shows that Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio is abandoning his plan to make a bid for Barnes & Noble’s retail stores and take them private. “While I reserve the right to pursue an offer in the future, I believe it is in the company’s best interests to focus on the business at hand,” Riggio said in a statement. “Right now our priority should be to serve the more than 10 million customers who own Nook devices, to concentrate on building our retail business, and to accelerate the sale of Nook products in our stores, and in the marketplace.”
Barnes & Noble is holding an investor call at 10 AM ET and we will be on the call.
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