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B&N Reports Revenues Down Across the Board

barnes noble logoBarnes & Noble released its annual report today for the fiscal year ending 2 May 2015.

According to the press release (which was also filed with the SEC as the 10-K report), the company saw a net loss was $19.4 million in the 4th quarter, compared to $36.7 million in the same period last year. For FY2015 B&N reported net earnings of $36.6 million, down from $47.3 million in the prior fiscal year.

With the exception of B&N College, revenues were down in all units, both for the quarter and for the year. On the plus side Nook revenues were half of those reported in FY2014 ($263.8 million vs $505.9 million) but the 4th quarter revenues didn’t drop quite as sharply ($52.4 million vs $87.1 million).

In related news, B&N sold $177 million in digital content last fiscal year, or about 28% less than the previous year. It’s a new low but the decline has slowed. Perhaps this means that the blood has stopped gushing.

click to embiggen

click to embiggen

From the press release:

  • Retail: The Retail segment, which includes Barnes & Noble Bookstores and BN.com, had revenues of $869 million for the quarter and $4.1 billion for the full year, decreasing 9.0% and 4.4%, respectively.  The inclusion of the 53rd week contributed $57 million in additional sales in fiscal 2014, representing a majority of the sales decline for the quarter.
  • B&N College: The College segment had revenues of $274 million for the quarter, decreasing 8.1% as compared to a year ago.  The inclusion of the 53rd week contributed $15 million in additional sales in fiscal 2014.  … For the fiscal year, despite the comparison to a 53-week year, College sales increased 1.4% to $1.8 billion, led by new store growth.
  • Nook: The NOOK segment (including digital content, devices and accessories) had revenues of $52 million for the quarter and $264 million for the full year, decreasing 39.8% for the quarter and 47.8% for the year.Device and accessories sales were $13 million for the quarter and $86 million for the full year, declining 48.2% and 66.7%, respectively, due to lower unit selling volume.  Digital content sales were $40 million for the quarter and $177 million for the full year, declining 36.5% and 27.8%, respectively, due primarily to lower device unit sales.

image by tompagenet

 

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Comments


fjtorres June 25, 2015 um 1:49 pm

$177M in ebook sales definitely puts Nook in single digit market share territory.


Paul June 25, 2015 um 2:24 pm

I think its partly because ebooks are cheaper (on those that they compete with Amazon) and hence they are still selling the same number (or more) books, but the amount of money they get is halved. (like a different company I know that claimed they had 95% of their sectors jobs market online, same as they had in print, except they turned their $12 million revenue into a $2 million product as their main competitor was themselves and everyone jumped to the online product for cost reasons).

fjtorres June 25, 2015 um 4:06 pm

No, it’s not that they are selling cheaper books.

They are simply selling a lot less books.
(Check the latest AE report for some anecdotal evidence.)

They are also annoying owners of Nook hardware and driving away PC and Mac readers. There’s a long list of reasons for how and why Nook is spiraling down the drain.

Paul June 25, 2015 um 4:08 pm

I did say partly….

Nate Hoffelder June 25, 2015 um 4:35 pm

Correct. Book prices rose in the Kindle Store over the past year.

Paul June 25, 2015 um 4:39 pm

Not the ones I’m buying.


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