Cost-cutting and an improved Web strategy helped Best Buy almost double its profits in the third quarter, the retailer said on Thursday.
An earnings report signaled to analysts that the company was on solid footing heading into the holiday shopping season.
“Retailers, a year or two ago, were sort of ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to compete with online,’ and maybe the business grew a little, but it wasn’t a cohesive omni-channel strategy,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Schick said, using the term for shopping through all available avenues like the Internet and at physical stores.
However, he said that the retailers that have put in the work “are seeing some benefits in late 2014.”
Best Buy increased its online sales 22 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 15 percent in the same period last year.
It is also focusing on how it delivers gifts to customers, after bad winter weather and a large volume of packages helped cause delivery delays last year.
Like other major retailers, Best Buy is trying to ship more items from its stores, rather than just a handful of warehouses around the country, in an effort to get packages to shoppers quickly.
On Thursday, Best Buy said it had expanded its ship-from-store option to 1,400 stores, up from 400 last year. Another online service, in-store pickup, has improved as well. It helps drive foot traffic, something all retailers have been struggling with as more customers choose to shop online.
“The trip to the stores needs to be extraordinary from a customer-experience standpoint,” Best Buy president and chief executive Hubert Joly said during a call with analysts on Thursday to discuss the third-quarter results.
“Like every holiday, though, we believe the outcome of these initiatives is, and will continue to be, tempered by other external and internal factors — including the investments that are required to drive them,” he said in an earlier statement giving Thursday’s results.
In the period that ended Nov. 1, Best Buy reported its earnings per share rose 78 percent to US$0.32. Profits rose to US$107 million, up from US$54 million last year. Revenue increased to US$9.38 billion compared with US$9.33 billion a year earlier.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last