B&N Holiday Sales Drop at Stores, Online  

by Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 1/6/2009 4:06:00 PM

Store sales fell 5.2% at Barnes & Noble in the nine week holiday period ended Jan. 3, dropping to $1.1 billion. Same store sales at the nation’s largest bookstore chain fell 7.7%; B&N had predicted that comp sales would fall between 6% to 9%. The company attributed the decline to a drop in store traffic, although business improved in the second half of December and the retailer posted positive comp sales in the final two weeks of the season. B&N’s stores actually performed better than B&N.com where sales fell 11.0% over the holidays, to $114.2 million. For the 48-week period ended Jan. 3, B&N.com sales were down slightly at B&N.com, falling 0.4%, to $422.9 million. Store sales were off 2.6%, to $4.2 billion, and store comps were down 5.4%.

B&N performed better than Borders where total sales fell 11.7% and superstore comps were down 13.6%. The performance of B&N.com, however, will likely trail results from Amazon which will report sales later this month. The holiday results were good enough for B&N to keep to its earnings forecast for the full year which puts earnings per share between $1.30 and $1.60. Analysts expect earnings to come in at $1.37.