Barnes and Noble Reports First Fiscal Quarter Loss Overall, Booming Sales for the NOOK

Posted on August 30, 2011

Barnes and Noble released its quarterly financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2012, which ended on July 20, 2011. The company reported a net loss of $57 million, or $0.99 per share, which is actually an improvement over the prior quarter which showed a loss of $23.6 million.

Digital sales for the NOOK are booming, where as sales in its bricks and mortar stores are slipping. The bright spots in earnings were due to the mid-quarter launch of the NOOK Simple Touch Reader and the fact that sales of digital content have quadrupled over the prior year's first quarter. when you consolidate all NOOK-related business -- hardware, digital content and accesories -- the NOOK business is up 140%. to $277 million

CEO William Lynch said, "Our strategy of growing market share in the exploding digital content business while maximizing cash flow and EBITDA from our retail operations is paying off. We plan to continue investing in the significant growth areas of our business, and in fiscal 2012, we expect to see leverage as our digital sales growth is projected to exceed the growth of investment spend. Additionally, the return on investment is expected to increase in future years, as readers purchase increasing amounts of digital content on the platform we have built."

Lynch indicated that the company is going full throttle with rolling out more NOOK-related content and applications. Considering the rocky start the NOOK had, it's an impressive rebound. As for the traditional bookselling business, Lynch said the company will make an additional $150 million to $200 million in sales because of the liquidation of Borders.