GME Getting The Pounding On Weak Industry Sales Data

GameStop Inc GME is getting hammered today as investors are reacting to the to the latest industry sales data that poured in ahead of this video game retailer's quarterly earnings report. NPD Group announced that video game sales dropped 22% in April. The drop is substantially higher than analyst expectation of a single-digit decline. Worse still, hardware sales for the month plunged 37% from the same quarter last year. NPD said that it is difficult to compare from the last year as April 2009 included the Easter holiday. NPD wrote in the report, "In April '09, consumers attributed $55 million of industry sales to Easter as a purchase occasion, which would account for about 21% of the decline from last year since Easter purchasing happened in March this year." By 12:47 am, the stock had fallen 5.64% to $21.40. Read more from Benzinga's Company news.