Barnes & Noble Sees Quarterly Revenue Decline on Lower Nook Volume

A 50 percent drop in Nook sales contributed to a 1 percent revenue dip in Barnes & Noble’s retail segment for fiscal Q3 ended Jan. 31, the company said Tuesday. Including digital content, devices and accessories, Nook segment revenue tumbled 51 percent to $78 million for the quarter, the company said. Device and accessories sales plummeted 63 percent due to “lower selling volume,” the company said, while content sales of $41 million represented a 29 percent decline over the year-ago quarter. CEO Mike Huseby said on an earnings webcast that Barnes & Noble’s purchase of Microsoft’s and Pearson’s Nook Media interest during the quarter helped “clear the path” for the company’s separation of its education segment from the retail business. The separation will let each business “better realize their strategic opportunities,” Huseby said. The Nook team “continues to seek opportunities to stabilize and potentially reverse the decline in content sales in what continues to be a challenging environment,” he said. Barnes & Noble remains committed to supporting the Nook product, which Huseby called an “integral part of our future because it is important to our customers.” In response to a question about expanding the Nook business, Huseby noted that Barnes & Noble has just released a new unified version of Android after having put out a number of different devices in the past with their own operating systems. “Now it’s a unified Android system,” he said. “We’re continuing to improve and streamline and consolidate the operating system, so we have the ability to be more nimble and adaptive on flowing it to other larger technology platforms.” Barnes & Noble is still in discussions about distributing the Nook app to “different larger scale platforms,” he said. Overall earnings for the quarter were $72 million, versus $63 million in the year-ago quarter, the company said, on sales of $1.96 billion.