Barnes & Noble Q1 loss narrows to $40M as Nook sales decline
The company blames production issues and unmet demand for its recently launched Glowlight version.
Barnes & Noble narrowed its fiscal first-quarter loss, but suffered through a few hiccups with its Nook e-reader business.
The book retailer posted a loss of $40.9 million, or 78 cents a share, compared with a loss of $56.6 million, or 99 cents a share, from a year ago. Revenue rose only slightly to $1.45 billion from $1.42 billion a year ago.
Analysts, on average, estimated that the company would post a loss of 98 cents on revenue of $1.48 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
The company's
The Nook business represents Barnes & Noble's foothold in the digital world. Even as the traditional brick-and-mortar store business declines, it has the opportunity to offset that business with its e-reader. But Barnes & Noble's e-reader and tablet positions face increasing competition from Amazon's
The unit's loss before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, also known as Ebitda, was $57 million, wider than the loss of $51 million it posted a year ago. The company attributes the loss to continued investment in the development of its Nook products.
On the retail end, which remains the biggest part of its business by far, Barnes & Noble posted revenue of $1.12 billion, a 2 percent increase from a year ago. The retailer has benefited from the shutdown of rival Borders. It also attributed its success to the popularity of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series.