The year-over-year comparable store sales increase was the best quarter for comp sales in three years, a sign of how low the bar has gone for Barnes & Noble’s sales. Regardless, it was a definite improvement.
As previously indicated, the heart of the holiday season was where the best sales increases occurred; comp store sales were up 4.3% for the period from Black Friday to January 1 (see "Barnes & Noble Advertises and Promotes Its Way to Good Holiday Sales").
Although much of the company’s marketing was focused on books, book sales were still down 1.2% for the quarter, with sales in trade paper, kids and young adult book sales short of expectations, the company said in its conference call (transcript by Seeking Alpha). Toys and games and gifts showed the strongest growth for the quarter.
Overall, sales for the quarter were $1.2 billion, flat vs. the previous year. Earnings were $66.9 mi8llion, a big improvement from a loss of $63.5 million in the same quarter a year ago.
There were a couple of other interesting bits from the conference call. One is that the company ran an experiment in 91 stores where it condensed and relocated music and movies out of the sales floor and filled the space with an educational toys and games assortment and collectible shop. While initial results were encouraging, the company wants to see how sales hold up for the rest of the year beyond the holiday season before making the changes across the chain.
And the impact of Amazon’s push into brick and mortar book retailing is starting to take shape. In response to a question about the impact of Amazon’s 19 bookstores, CFO Allen Lindstrom laid out the story. "It has an impact on our stores," he said. "It depends obviously how far away they are from our stores but it’s a completely different experience for our customers. So there is obviously an impact to those stores. But it’s not been a material impact to date." For photos from a recent visit, see the Pro article "Pro: Channel Check: Amazon Books on Columbus Circle in New York City."
