Best Buy’s quarterly revenue falls 4.1 pct

Revenue in the United States will be little changed this year and will decline in the first quarter, the Richfield, Minnesota-based company said Thursday in a statement. The company does not see any turnaround of fortunes in its comparable store sales and sees a fall of 1.0 – 2.0% in the first quarter. “In addition, we intend to reward our shareholders by being a premium dividend payer and increasing our non-GAAP EPS through ongoing share repurchases”. Excluding certain items, the company earned $1.53, up from $1.48 a year earlier.

Best Buy also said it would buy back up to $1-billion in shares over the next two years and it announced a special dividend of 45 cents per share.

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for a business that badly needs to start growing revenue – after all, there are only so many costs a company can cut to make an earnings number.

Best Buy’s shares fell around 3 percent in early trading Thursday.

TheStreet takes a look at three of the most glaring problems Best Buy exposed with its latest results. Yet, despite its efforts digitally Best Buy continued to lag its chief online foe Amazon (AMZN – Get Report) a year ago.

Best Buy chairman and CEO, Hubert Joly, stated in the press release: “In our Domestic business, we exceeded our bottom-line expectations due to a well-executed holiday plan, a disciplined promotional strategy, better recovery on returned and clearance product and strong expense management”. As a real kick to Best Buy’s face?

Best Buy shares have fallen about 20% over the past 12 months, and are down 3% year-to-date.

Still, its net profit dropped 8 percent.

Best Buy Co, Inc is a provider of technology products, services and solutions. Best Buy also made an investment in offering better prices on its services such as computer repairs and home installation that apparently didn’t pan out – comparable store sales for services fell 11.9% in the quarter. Higher earnings came despite weakness in comparable store sales, both domestic and enterprise though its online comparable sales growth rate improved from the preceding year period.

Another show of force is that Best Buy’s e-commerce revenue rose by nearly 14% (200 basis points) to a total of 15.6% of its total domestic revenue. The sales trend didn’t get any better the remainder of the month. CIBC World Markets now owns 34,317 shares of the technology retailer’s stock worth $1,045,000 after buying an additional 4,388 shares during the last quarter. This is an increase from Best Buy Co’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.23. Overall revenue slid 4.1% to $13.6 billion.

While Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE:BBY) delivered better than expected earnings and revenues for the fourth quarter, tepid guidance is still dragging the stock down.