Best Buy reports weak overall Decemebr sales, but smartphones and tablets were its big drivers

t’s got to be rough being Best Buy, which is still considered to be one of the big players in the consumer electronics space, but heavy competition from other retailers, especially online ones, have been eating away at Big Blue’s once indomitable presence.

Today, consumer electronics giant Best Buy announced its December revenue – and it didn’t look too pretty. For the five weeks in its month ending on December 31st, they reported weaker than expected sales, as their woes continue to show how competitive the landscape is becoming. In their report, the company established $8.4 billion in revenue, which is a flat tally when you pit it against the same figure reported by them over a year ago.

Interestingly, its comparable same store sales figure, which is a key indicator for growth for any retailer, was actually in decline by 1.2 percent – meaning, the same stores opened last year did less sales this time around. Looking abroad, the company’s international segment produced $1.9 billion in revenue, which is a 1.7 percent drop from last year’s number, and its same store sales dropped by 4.3 percent. Domestically, Best Buy generated $6.5 billion in revenue, up 0.4 percent from the year ago period, but at the same time, it displays a 0.4 percent reduction in same store sales.

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said, “Based on our performance in December we continue to expect to achieve our annual guidance, despite customer traffic that was lower than expected until the last week before Christmas, which resulted in December revenue that was slightly lower than our expectations. The actions we have taken during the year to improve our performance online and in key connectable products such as tablets, eReaders and smart phones continued to deliver strong growth in December.”


Overall, there wasn’t as much growth in many product categories, but if there’s one shiny spot for them, it was found in the cell phone and tablet categories. Simply, they combined for a 20 percent increase in sales over last year’s December figure, which goes to show how profitable they are. Still, it also shows us that they’re very much in demand – as opposed to other things.