Barnes & Noble continues to lose money, expects losses to grow

[Brian G Turner]

Barnes & Noble's financial statement for 2017:
Barnes & Noble Reports Fiscal 2017 Year-End Financial Results

In short: store sales were down 6.5% and are expected to decline by a similar figure of the 2018 fiscal year.

The company saved money by cutting costs, but is still losing money on the Nook.

All told, unless B&N find a way to turn things around, then it's clearly a company in decline - not too dramatically at the moment - but it can't be good news that it expects to continue to shrink.

In other words, it's future appears to be one of an increasingly small company trying to cut costs in the face of falling sales in order to be profitable.

 

[Cli-Fi]

Barnes & Noble's financial statement for 2017:
Barnes & Noble Reports Fiscal 2017 Year-End Financial Results

In short: store sales were down 6.5% and are expected to decline by a similar figure of the 2018 fiscal year.

The company saved money by cutting costs, but is still losing money on the Nook.

All told, unless B&N find a way to turn things around, then it's clearly a company in decline - not too dramatically at the moment - but it can't be good news that it expects to continue to shrink.

In other words, it's future appears to be one of an increasingly small company trying to cut costs in the face of falling sales in order to be profitable.

Seems ripe for an acquisition. Not sure if anybody needs to buy them though. Amazon would be the most likely, but they have the same stuff as B & N unless they want even more stores

 

[Extollager]

I've had no particular fondness for the American B&N bookstores that I have seen. A great deal of what has been on offer has semed likely to me to be rubbish. But it's a bit sad to see a bookstore that one can walk around in disappear.

Perhaps traffic in books will become almost entirely a matter of mail sales, plus shops run by people who love books and don't mind minimal profits of even running a business at a loss. There will be exceptions. I think thousands of people would take to the streets (and the shelves) in support of Powell's Books in Portland if it were in danger of closing. Maybe not. In any event I doubt that it is in any danger. It seems to have become a business with a central place in Portlanders' pride in their city. (I confess I haven't been to Powell's since, I suppose, the 1980s, but my sense is that it thrives, at least in its main location on Burnside. I wonder if its satellite stores are doing good business.)

But Powell's is an independent store in a city that, I suppose, contains quite a bit of anti-chain sentiment.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's been in decline for quite a while. They closed a lot of them several years ago. I'm actually surprised they are still hanging on. If Borders hadn't gone belly-up first I think B & N wouldn't have lasted this long.

 

[Parson]

I agree with you T.E. And I don't see a way forward in any sense like it's present form. I would guess that all, or nearly all, smaller market stores close, and a consolidation in the big market areas to one or two genuinely HUGE stores where they would have in stock almost anything with a sizable demand. Giving you a place to look and buy at the same time. They have to become destination stores. And if what we see in the malls is transferable, it also has to have a bit of "entertainment" to go with it.

 

[pambaddeley]

Certainly seemed the writing was on the wall when they closed the Nook store in the UK.

 

[Stuart Suffel]

And yet independent books stores are showing a come back. Cant remember the name of a recent one, Books are Magic, maybe?

Anyway, it may well be what BnN are delivering, more so than a drop in brinks n mortar bookshops.

 

[Parson]

brinks n mortar bookshops.

Unintended Pun? I'm sure they hope they need Brinks trucks.

 

[Stuart Suffel]

Unintended Pun? I'm sure they hope they need Brinks trucks.

Er, yes, a pun. That's what it was...

 

[Vladd67]

Books stores do seem to be falling out of favour, even looters don't touch them as seen in the London riots a few years back.
It's a Pattern: London Rioters Are Leaving Bookstores Untouched
However the Guardian as ever blamed the class system.
Reading the riot acts: why wasn't Waterstone's looted?

Maybe it's just a question of class. As the author Gavin James Bower says, "Jobs in publishing overwhelmingly go to white, middle-class people. The product reflects this, which isn't much good if you're a working-class kid." If publishing is full of white, middle-class people is it any wonder that bookshops are too?