The Barnes & Noble quarterly earnings report was almost totally bad news. Earnings, revenue, and sales — all down. The forerunner for the eReading craze has fallen far behind as of late, but there is one bright spot. A new Nook is coming, and it’s going to be made by Barnes & Noble.
Concentrating on Nook (because this is an Android site, after all), troubling numbers abound. Their revenues for Q4 2013 were down 50.4% over the same time in 2012, which correlates with device and accessory sales dropping 58.2%. Digital content, which is the real bread-and-butter for Nook, was also down — 26.5% to $57 million for the last quarter of 2013.
To combat this sharp decline, Barnes & Noble plans to release a new tablet. Via the earnings announcement, CEO Michael P. Huseby said “The Company is actively engaged in discussions with several world-class hardware partners related to device development as well as content packaging and distribution. As a result, we plan to launch a new NOOK color device in early fiscal 2015.” Early fiscal 2015 would likely be sometime this fall.
As for all the staffing shakeups we’ve heard so much about, the earnings statement touched on that as well. “As part of the Company’s ongoing efforts to rationalize the NOOK business and position it for future success and value creation, staffing levels in certain areas of the organization have changed, leading to certain job eliminations after the quarter ended. These ongoing efforts may involve additional actions.” From that cryptic last sentence, we can assume the axe hasn’t fallen all the way down just yet.
