Best Buy tops expectations on strong holiday sales; monitoring coronavirus impact

Best Buy reported its 12th straight quarter of same-store growth fueled by sales of headphones, appliances, mobile phones and tablets during the holiday shopping season.

Net income totaled $745 million, or $2.84 per share, for the quarter ended Feb.1, up from $735 million, or $2.69 per share, last year. Analysts had forecast earnings of $2.75. 

Total revenue rose to $15.196 billion from $14.801 billion, topping estimates of $15.05 billion.  Same-store sales rose 3.2%, also more than expected. Comparable online sales increased18.7%. 

Best Buy is “closely” monitoring the coronavirus outbreak and expects most of its impact to be in the first half of the year, according to company CFO Matt Bilunas.

“This is a very fluid situation, which makes it difficult to determine exact financial impacts from disruptions in supply chain,” he said. “Based on what we know today, we have assumed the majority of the impacts occur in the first half of the year. Therefore, we view this as a relatively short-term disruption that does not impact our long-term strategy and initiatives. Our guidance ranges for both Q1 and the full year reflect our best estimates of the impacts at this time.”

Best Buy’s fiscal 2021 forecast calls for an adjusted earnings range of $6.10 to $6.30 per share and for same-store sales to be flat to up 2%. Revenue will be in the range of $43.3 billion to $44.3 billion.