Best Buy Misses Estimates, Falls 9% (BBY)

Best Buy Co., Inc. BBY on Tuesday morning released financial results that missed Wall Street expectations. Best Buy Co., Inc reported that its 3rd quarter net earnings fell to $217 million, or 54 cents per share, down from $227 million, or 53 cents per share, a year earlier. The company's revenue fell to $11.89 billion, down from $12.02 billion a year earlier. A poll of analysts conducted by Thomson Reuters showed an average Wall Street estimate of expected earnings of 61 cents per share, on revenue of $12.47 billion. Executive vice president of finance and CFO Jim Muehlbauer said, “Fiscal third quarter domestic sales were softer than we expected, but we were very pleased with the continued strong gross margin performance and actions to lower variable expenses. Based on lower than expected sales and earnings in the fiscal third quarter, and given our current visibility to potential outcomes in the fiscal fourth quarter, we now expect annual earnings to be below our previous fiscal 2011 EPS guidance. There remains a significant amount of business still ahead of us in the holiday selling season and we don't have complete visibility to how customers will behave over the next several weeks. However, our best view today is that we now expect annual EPS in the range of $3.20 to $3.40.” Best Buy Co., Inc. (BBY) ended the previous trading session at $41.70 per share and is currently down 9% at $37.96 per share during pre-market trading. Analysts covering the company's stock have a consensus price target of $46.82 per share. Read more from Benzinga's Company news.