Earnings Labs

Best Buy Co., Inc. (BBY)

Q3 2011 Earnings Call· Tue, Dec 14, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Best Buy’s Third Quarter FY11 Earnings conference call. During today’s presentation all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. If you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by the two; and if you are using speaker equipment, please lift the handset before making your selection. This conference is being recorded today, Tuesday, December 14, 2010. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bill Seymour, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Bill Seymour

Management

Thank you, Alicia. Good morning everyone and thank you for participating in our fiscal 2011 third quarter earnings conference call. We have two speakers for you today. First, Brian Dunn, our CEO will share his thoughts on the quarter and the rest of the year. Second, Jim Muehlbauer, our CFO will recap the financial performance, then provide you with our perspective on how the balance of the year will play out. And after our prepared remarks, I anticipate we will have ample time for questions. Before I pass the call over to Brian, I’d like to take care of a few housekeeping items. First, we would like to request that callers limit themselves to a single question during the Q&A portion of the call so we can get to as many questions as possible during the next hour. Second, I’d like to remind you that the comments made by me or by others representing Best Buy may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our SEC filings contain additional information about factors that could cause actual results to differ from management’s expectations. Third, as usual, the media are participating in this call in a listen-only mode. And lastly, I’d like to remind you that our fiscal 2010 first quarter results last year included restructuring charges which impacted our net earnings by $25 million or $0.06 per diluted share. The balance of our discussion on this morning’s call will exclude these charges. That means that the comparisons we make will be on an adjusted non-GAAP basis. For a comprehensive GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation of our reported to adjusted results, please refer to the supplemental schedule in this morning’s news release. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Brian Dunn.

Brian Dunn

Management

Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us on our third quarter earnings conference call. First I want to take this opportunity to thank our employees for their tremendous effort this quarter and during the Black Friday weekend, and I want to extend our sincere appreciation to our customers for shopping at Best Buy. I’d also like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Our third quarter results fell short of our expectations in some respects, and I want to address that in detail; but I’d like to begin by emphasizing the many positive trends we’ve identified this year. These trends, which provide further validation of our strategic direction, gained powerful momentum in the third quarter. Our growth in connections during the quarter led to continued gross margin strength. Margins were up 90 basis points in our domestic business driven primarily by the growth of Best Buy Mobile. Gross margin expansion is a key indicator of our progress in our Connected World strategy, and I’m pleased with the continued gross margin progress this year. Central to our Connected World strategy is driving gross margin outside of our traditional hardware categories. As a proof point, we had strong connections revenue growth in Best Buy Mobile, computing and TV. Solutions as a percentage of our sales mix increased year-over-year driven by the strength in connections as well as services, accessories, and Black Tie Protection. Going forward, I expect that the growth of Best Buy Mobile as well as the continued momentum of our other Connected World initiatives will continue to drive our margin expansion. Our expense control was tight in the quarter. Total Company SG&A was up only 1% year-on-year, which is good considering the lower sales than expected. Our in-store execution continues to be solid. Our international business maintained…

James Muehlbauer

Management

Thanks, Brian, and good morning everyone. My comments today will cover our third quarter results and how they compared with our plans. I will also provide you an update on how we are thinking about our annual guidance based on these results and potential outcomes in the fourth quarter. The net earnings of $0.54 per share we reported in the third quarter was below our expectation and Street estimates. While we are clearly not satisfied with the sales outcomes which drove the earnings shortfall this quarter, there were several key items embedded in these results that continue to be encouraging trends on the progress we are making in the operating model. These items include the strong continued expansion of gross margins driven by sales of connections, solid controls over variable expenses, and share buyback activity, all of which are core elements of our plans to improve shareholder returns. As you noticed in our release this morning, the single largest driver of our softer than expected performance in the quarter was the comparable store sales decline in the domestic segment; so let’s turn straight to the domestic sales story in the quarter. Domestically, third quarter revenues decreased 3% from last year to $8.7 billion. The quarter saw a comparable store sales decline of 5% versus our expectation of flat to modest growth. In setting our plans for the quarter, we knew that we would be up against very strong comparisons from the prior year. If you recall, unlike many retailers, our domestic segment comps last year in the third quarter were up approximately 5%, and November was up even a stronger 8%. Looking at this year’s actual sales performance in the third quarter, Brian has summarized the key drivers of what was different versus our expectations, including a softer industry environment…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, you can press star, two; and also if you are using speaker equipment, please lift the handset before making your selection. And our first question is from the line of Gary Balter with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Gary Balter – Credit Suisse: Thank you. Just a question on—you mentioned in the press release about the loss of market share. Could you discuss who you believe you lost that share to, and what you’re doing to regain it?

Brian Dunn

Management

Sure, Gary. Good morning. Happy to take a run at that. As we discussed in our commentary around—or in my prepared remarks, there was an awful lot of activity at opening price points, particularly in home theater, and this was primarily at some of the large discounters. And this was a space, as you well know—our strategy is really focused on great name brands, the big sort of tier one, tier two name brands, at great prices. There was an awful lot of activity at the sort of tier three brands at opening price points, and (inaudible) that was a place we elected not to chase. Gary Balter – Credit Suisse: So it was mostly in TVs, is what you’re saying? Or all in TVs?

Brian Dunn

Management

Mike, do you want to add a little color to that?

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

Yes, hi Gary. This is Mike Vitelli. I think it’s a little bit in television and a little bit in computing; and I think when we calculate our share—one point for everybody listening is there are categories like smartphones where our greatest growth is that is not in the calculation. It’s mainly the traditional CEIT, so that’s why it’s TV and computing is the big story—or the big difference. But let’s talk about what we’re comparing to. You know, Best Buy is about latest and greatest; and last year that really played to that strength as we had the digital TV transition. We had the launch of LED, LCD televisions. We had the launch of Windows 7. We had record high shares in all of those areas, so we knew that we were going to get some of that decline coming off, and we saw a little bit there. And as Brian said, a little bit in entry level televisions and in entry level computing in November, where we have that promotion going on more actively in December. So in 32-inch televisions, we did that a lot last year around the Black Friday time period. This year, we didn’t do it then. We’re doing our—a lot of our 32-inch television promotions right now. Gary Balter – Credit Suisse: And just following up on that market share question – you talked about how the TV sales, the high end isn’t really catching on right now. What does that imply for you in terms of your outlook for this month and for, I guess, January and February, a bit into next year. But what do you think is holding back that consumer from buying either the LED TV or the 3D TV? Is it pricing? Is it just not enough differentiation from what they could get on a cheaper LCD, and how are you adapting to that?

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

Let’s break those two things apart. I think LED TV is actually selling quite well. It’s distribution has broadened and that’s part of our share going from, really, record high early adopter launch shares last year to a slightly more normalized but still well above our average TV—we’re well above our average TV share in LED TVs, so that’s going well. The other thing I would say is going well is plasma is very, very strong. The growth in units in plasma was offset by their ASP decline. Your biggest ASP declines in the quarter and year-over-year are in plasma TV and large screen. In that case, we see growth in both of those places – growth in units of greater than 43-inch LCD TV and growth in units of plasma TVs. Their ASP declines are offsetting it, though, so we’re not seeing the growth there. The place where you’re mentioning that we’re not seeing both the industry and our expectations in growth right now are 3D television and Internet-connected television. They’re a little bit slower than I think the industry wanted it to be. LED, I think, is just one of those that has to ramp up. There needs to be more content for it and we’ll be able to see a little bit more of that over time as their retail prices start to change.

Brian Dunn

Management

3D, not LED.

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

3D.

Brian Dunn

Management

Gary, can I just add one thing? In my remarks, I mentioned Magnolia. We’re actually doing—we’re quite pleased in the high end. It is an adoption in the middle which we see as a next-year sort of value proposition for the consumers in the middle around 3D and IPTV. Thanks for the question, Gary. Gary Balter – Credit Suisse: Okay, thank you.

Bill Seymour

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from the line of Christopher Horvers with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Christopher Horvers – JPMorgan: Thanks and good morning. I want to step back and try to focus big picture. There’s been a constant back and forth with the Street, just people saying the product cycle’s weak and you’ve consistently countered that point. As you think about retail sales here and very strong sales in nearly every other category, as you think about those market share comparisons ahead, can you talk about your ability to really drive sales and margins simultaneously, and perhaps as you think about your top line outlook, is it really a function of labor markets getting better and driving a replacement cycle of what’s a relatively young stock of electronics in people’s homes, particularly TV and notebooks?

James Muehlbauer

Management

Yeah Chris, it’s Jim. Why don’t I just take the first part of that and pull it apart a little bit? I think your commentary on the overall performance in retail so far this holiday season, you know, appearing to be relatively solid certainly is valid as we look across other retailers. I think part of that from our perspective is that we also had an anomaly last year in the performance in our business during Q3 in November, and specifically in December. We posted very strong comparable store sales gains. Most of the folks that are comping up against those numbers are comping up against much weaker comparisons, maybe even negative comparisons from last year. So as I look on a two-year basis, we’re not that far off of what most of retail is doing, maybe a little bit behind at this point in the holiday season. Clearly like a lot of retail but in the CE space, there we’ve talked about headwinds from a macro standpoint around employment and housing and jobs for quite a period of time, so I don’t think there’s any new news in that phenomenon. What we have been focused don is all year long where we’ve seen products that have strong customer appeal, that are the latest and greatest, we’ve seen people opening up their pocketbooks; so whether it’s been the launch of new smartphones, the launch of the early changes to the gaming platforms we’ve seen, what we’ve seen in the tablet space overall – consumers are out spending in those categories. It’s just that the weight of those new things right now during the current year hasn’t been able to overcome the size of the core growth in our televisions and core notebook business overall. So as Brian mentioned, our business…

Brian Dunn

Management

Yeah, Mike, go ahead.

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

The point on phones is the way the phone business is and the way that phones are sold as subsidized—like, free phone is a not a new phenomenon. What it is, is we’re being aggressive in the smartphone category, which is the fastest growing one. That is still a—while it doesn’t address the top line, the way it flows in, it’s very significant to our margins and you’re seeing that happening, and we believe that category is going to continue to grow and continue to grow aggressively, and we’re going to be a significant part of that. I think the smartphone and our Best Buy Mobile business in general is a significant trend that’s going to continue in the quarters that you described. The other thing I think that we’re optimistic about is it’s clear that the tablet concept is very hot in consumers’ minds. It’s extracted a lot of early adopter dollars right now. A lot of those dollars are going outside of Best Buy at this minute because there’s a very limited number of manufacturers and products in that space. But that’s going to rapidly change as we head into next year, for the four quarters of next year, and that gives us a strong opportunity as when there’s a broad array of products and suppliers in this area, we do great.

Brian Dunn

Management

And as far as television, I’ll just add – as we get into next year - you asked about the next three quarters – certainly over the next year you’re going to see the second and third generation of IPTV which we think will come out more appropriately featured and be more and more interesting to consumers. Thanks for the questions.

Bill Seymour

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from the line of Mitch Kaiser with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead. Mitchell Kaiser – Piper Jaffray: Thanks, guys. Good morning.

Brian Dunn

Management

Good morning, Mitch. Mitchell Kaiser – Piper Jaffray: I was hoping you could talk a little bit just on your philosophy around opening price point products. I think last year you really chose to participate on the computing and TV category. Sounds like you’ve pulled back a little bit this year relative to last. And then if we stay kind of in this—you know, where the advance featured products are still going to be somewhat challenged, would you step on the accelerator on the opening price point, do you think?

Brian Dunn

Management

I’ll—let me start with a frame here and then I’ll ask Mike to give a little detail. I mentioned in our remarks, my prepared remarks, that we were not focused on that opening price point. We certainly have the opening price point represented in our store and will continue to have that kind of value represented in our store. We chose not to lead with it, Mitch, because we have a—I have a strong view that where we really add value is with those great name brands and that sort of latest and greatest technology at a great price that our people can help you put together better than anyone. And Mike, perhaps you want to speak a little bit on how we’re thinking about future promotions?

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

I think in TV—I’d mentioned it earlier but it’s worth repeating. We did our entry level 32-inch promotion in November. This year we’re doing it in December. We’re aggressive with that right now. On the computing side, we’ve made price adjustments in the third quarter and into the fourth quarter to be more aggressive because the consumer is definitely showing a propensity at the low end. We look at it as our share, if there was any loss in computing, it was in the below $400 range where we’re trying to make sure we have more competitive offers there.

Brian Dunn

Management

Yes. And Mitch, if I could just—you asked about our philosophy. We’re absolutely interested in increasing our presence in lower price points. We’re always going to be mindful of profitability. You’ll see us leverage our presence online to do some of that sort of hot price points; and you’re going to see us do what we do very well. We’re going to implement promotions to drive traffic to our stores, to our online channel, to our phone channel. Mitchell Kaiser – Piper Jaffray: And then just as you think about—you mentioned the weakness in IPTV and 3D. Is it more a pricing issue or is it a customer perception issue, or is it a combination of both? How should we think about that? Thanks.

Brian Dunn

Management

I think—I’ll take a stab at this, Mike. I think there’s a couple of things. I think there was confusion about 3D early. It was a little short on content. I think as this fall now, we’ve had some big gaming titles that have come out with 3D. More and more cinematic releases are coming out in 3D. I think 3D will become top of mind as an important feature for television as we get into next year. And as far as IPTV, I think it’s still really new and I think the idea and the notion of it is still new, and I don’t know if it is enough by itself to get people off the couch to go buy a new TV as we sit today.

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

I think that’s right. I think it’s both of those areas; and I also think the reality is, again, the strength of the tablet category has captured mind share and wallet share of early adopters of new technologies this year. I think that’s—it’s hard to suggest that a tablet is taking TV share. It’s not because it’s doing the same thing. It’s a mind and dollar placement.

Brian Dunn

Management

This isn’t a year where people are going to come out and buy a new television and a new computer or tablet. Thanks, Mitch.

Bill Seymour

Management

Next question, please. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from the line of Matthew Fassler with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Matthew Fassler – Goldman Sachs: Thanks a lot, and good morning. If we could just get a little more clarity on how you see some of the moving pieces playing out during the fourth quarter. You often give us sales guidance as well as earnings guidance. I didn’t see that here. What I hear from you is perhaps a little more of a promotional stance on television as you talked about moving the lower price promotions into December. Presumably some of the sales weakness as well is baked into that guidance; but any color you could give us on the contours of those expectations would be terrific.

James Muehlbauer

Management

Yeah Matt, it’s Jim. Thanks for the question. Given where we’re at in the quarter and given the predominance that the month of December has in the quarter, we decided it would be more useful that—we’ll wait to get through December sales and we’ll do our December sales release, and then we’ll give color and context around what we actually see. But as we look at what the potential range of outcomes could be through Q4, there are multiple scenarios that are playing out in that new guidance range. What I would tell you is that the primary driver in the range is really what does comparable store sales look like through the holiday season. There are some variables we have in that, both plus and minus, on the margin standpoint; but the key lever I’m looking at in that sales range—I’m sorry, in that EPS range, is what’s the top line look like overall. Matthew Fassler – Goldman Sachs: And if I could just ask as a very quick follow-up to that – as TV pricing has started to come down, there’s been some discussion of how elastic this category is. Can you give us your updated thoughts on that? It sounds like it might be elastic to some degree, but perhaps in some price points that you chose not to play in in the third quarter. But as you take a high level look at the impact of vendors lowering prices, what do you think it’s doing for the market?

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

What we’re seeing is plasma televisions had pretty significant price declines year-over-year, probably in the 15% range, and dramatically changed their unit take rate slightly higher than that, so it offset gave us some positives. So there is some elasticity at the high end. We see that. I will tell you, though, at the highest end there’s been less than we’ve seen in the past, and I think that’s a comment on the consumer in general – is that we’ve seen at the high end, a price change doesn’t have the same impact as it would have had a year or two years ago. Matthew Fassler – Goldman Sachs: Thank you so much, guys.

Brian Dunn

Management

Thanks, Matt.

Bill Seymour

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from the line of David Strasser with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead. David Strasser – Janney Montgomery Scott: Thank you very much. Going back a little bit more to the market share, and I guess it’s somewhat related—it’s been touched on a bit already on the call, but when you look at the market share, do you worry that maybe that the promotional calendar, or your promotional strategy, was too focused around wireless, particularly at this time of year? Like walking through the stores particularly around Black Friday weekend, it’s a relatively tough sell; yet it seemed that on TV and circulars, it tends to be highly focused on that category. And do you think you lost message elsewhere? And just as a follow-up to that, too, does it make you think a little bit about the wireless strategy, about rolling out the Best Buy Mobiles quicker to try and maybe differentiate those offerings a little bit?

James Muehlbauer

Management

Yeah, David, we certainly look at the wireless activity—at the way customers have been responding to that for a period of time. And we have been, obviously, moving very quickly in that space, both within our store-within-a-stores within Best Buy, whether it’s expanding square footage that we dedicate to the wireless space, and as you know we’ve ramped up the number of standalone stores we have in that space. And as tablets come on, that category from a mobility and connectivity standpoint even gets more interesting going forward. So we have been accelerating that space, and as Brian mentioned in his comments, we’ve got a long way to go from a market share standpoint. So that business is going to continue to be very exciting for us. As far as to your question around how do we look at the promotional activity in Q3, specifically in November, wireless versus other categories, I think customers who shop with the Best Buy experience are accustomed to seeing a wide variety of things featured during that period of time, and customers obviously come in with different needs today. So from our lens, I don’t think we overemphasized the wireless category at the expense of our television and our computing business. To Brian’s point, we felt actually very good about the offers we had out there in both of those categories overall based on who our customer is and how they shop us. One of the great benefits that we have given the reward zone database is that we’ve been able to track customer behaviors on Black Fridays for years and understand which customers just shop us that day to cherry-pick and actually don’t come back into the model overall. So what we’ve spent more of our time doing is putting our promotional dollars against customers and against experiences where we add the most value, so whether that is inviting our reward zone silver customers to promotional events in advance of Black Friday and using that energy around better experiences for those best customers, or partnering with our vendors to come up with offers on Black Friday that really demonstrate what the best of we do together versus, I would say, driving a higher top line with actually less profitability. So we know that top line—in some cases when they’re in third tier type products, does not translate into more customer loyalty, does not translate into more profitability for our business. So it’s always about balancing where we put the promotional effort versus the long-term strategy of the Company.

Brian Dunn

Management

And that balance, David – this is Brian – is the tightrope we always walk. And you’re asking what is a very good question when we’re right in the middle of the game. We’ll have a much better understanding as we get through December and into January, and I think we’ll be able to provide a little color then. David Strasser – Janney Montgomery Scott: Fair enough. Thank you.

Bill Seymour

Management

Next question, please. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Brad Thomas with Keybanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Bradley Thomas – Keybanc Capital Markets: Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on the SG&A. Very well controlled during the quarter. As you as a company evolve from being more of a growth company several years ago to being more expense and return focused now and more margin focused, how should we think about SG&A growth as we look ahead to 2011 in light of perhaps some of these more challenged top line trends?

Brian Dunn

Management

I have to jump in. We sort of reject the notion that we’re not a growth company as well. You’re absolutely right that we’re focused on expanding our margin rate and extracting value for what we’re able to do for customers and actively pursuing businesses where we can make a difference and are margin-rich. But we absolutely see ourselves as a growth company.

James Muehlbauer

Management

And certainly the investments that we’ve made, Brad, have focused on areas where we can drive profitable growth, so we’ve been spending more money in categories like mobile phones, whether it’s in-store or outside of the store. We’re going to continue to spend money where the customer is going in those spaces. The good news is from an SG&A standpoint, we spend on average a little bit more in transacting that business with customers, but the returns we get from a margin standpoint are also much greater, so that’s a great trade-off overall. As we look at the portfolio certainly going forward, we’re always making adjustments to the operating model; and when I look at the expense profile for this year with expenses being up—you know, planned for the year 5ish, a little over 5% versus the trajectory we’ve been on historically, it’s a much, much lower run rate that we have experienced overall. So as we plan expenses in the environment, you know, we’re looking at the levers around where is the customer going, what type of support do we need to provide from an in-store experience and labor model around that; and then if we see parts of the portfolio that aren’t performing at the same level we anticipated, we have the ability to dial back those investments in-store as we go forward. So we’re not getting into guidance for next year yet, but certainly every year when we set expenses, we’re mindful of the environment that we’re moving into, and I think you saw us take a big step down over the last year. To Brian’s point, we are going to continue to invest expenses in places that are good for our shareholders, and we’re not bashful about doing that at all; at the same time, harvesting expenses from areas that aren’t delivering the same levels of returns that they historically did.

Brian Dunn

Management

That’s right. You’ll also see us, Brad—while I sort of emphatically state that we’re a growth company, you’re also going to see us—we have an awful lot of investment deployed that we should be able to leverage and will leverage benefit from over the quarters and years ahead, and you will see us continue to be focused on returning excess cash to our shareholders. Thank you. Bradley Thomas – Keybanc Capital Markets: Okay, thank you Brian and Jim. If I could just ask one follow-up question on the inventory commentary that you had earlier, Jim – could you maybe just talk a little bit more about the leverage that you’re able to pull above and beyond just getting a bit more promotional with the slightly elevated inventory levels that you have going into the holiday season?

James Muehlbauer

Management

Yeah I mean, Brad, we’re focused on inventory at a moment in time here in Q3 with the enormous amount of volume we have in Q4. So we run a very high velocity business during this time of year, and even if you go back two years ago when the environment changed dramatically, we actually—we were at peak inventory levels before the holiday season when the environment changed. We were able to manage and navigate through that successfully with our vendor partners and our customers, so looking at what inventory trends are sitting there today, more specifically what the specific inventory is, we feel that we’re in a good position to move that inventory through the balance of Q4 and actually moderate purchases of future inventory. A lot of that stuff that’s on our balance sheet today, 30 days from now it will be gone. So we’re really talking about what’s our reorder pattern going forward. Bradley Thomas – Keybanc Capital Markets: Great. Thanks Brian. Thanks Jim. Best of luck here for these next couple of weeks.

James Muehlbauer

Management

Thank you very much.

Bill Seymour

Management

Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from the line of Greg Melich with ISI. Please go ahead. Greg Melich – ISI Group: Thanks. I want to talk about the traffic side of it. I think you’d mentioned that ASPs were down a little bit or transaction size, so traffic may be running down 4%. How is that trending and what do you think is driving that, and how do you actually get that to improve? And one thing that did look better was service – I’m just curious, what was driving services in the quarter to at least do better than the Company?

Brian Dunn

Management

Greg, you got garbled there at the back end. Can you restate the question for me, please? Greg Melich – ISI Group: On the services side, what helped services do better than the rest of the Company? What area was strong?

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

Greg, this is Mike Vitelli again. On the traffic side, I would say the biggest portion of the traffic declines are consistent with the story we’ve been telling for several years now. Packaged media sales have declined in units and that’s a significant part of the overall traffic and has declined. And a little bit was in the television and computing area that we just discussed, so that wasn’t a new or big story from what we described earlier. Our close rates are improving, which is improving our overall transaction count, which is better than the traffic move. And I think to your point, what’s happening in that close rate in addition to the individual units themselves is the complete solution. So we’re seeing, whether it’s computing or home theater, increased attachment rates at every price band of television and every price band of computing in Geek Squad Black Tie Protection. And that has been a significant part of the service growth as our close rate and our complete solution, the two biggest categories have improved.

Brian Dunn

Management

I’d also just add—reiterate, the terrific—on top of everything Mike just said, the terrific job our sales associates are doing in presenting the value that those plans represent to our consumers.

Bill Seymour

Management

Thank you. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Mike Baker with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Mike Baker – Deutsche Bank: Thanks. Two questions – one, on your fourth quarter outlook, wondering how you’re balancing what sounds like being more promotional with, as I look at it, you have a more difficult comparison. So I just want to understand how those play into your range of outcomes for the fourth quarter. And then following up, Brian, on your point of stating you’re a growth company, is that a square footage growth company? I guess what I’m getting at is what do you see as your square footage expansion over time, domestically but perhaps more importantly overseas? Or is that growth more of growing the existing assets, growing margins, growing earnings perhaps even through buybacks, et cetera?

Brian Dunn

Management

I’ll answer that. First, I’m going to go to the first part of the question. It is about profitable growth. It is about growth in connections, and if you want to sort of back up and look at us historically, for many, many years we were a strong product-centric company. Then we moved into an area of customer-centricity, very focused on our customer. You should think about us taking the best elements of both and moving them into this Connected World. Best Buy Mobile is the example we cite most frequently because it’s the most developed. You should think of it as profitable growth around connections and geography, but primarily driven by profitable growth with connections.

James Muehlbauer

Management

Yeah and Mike, just to round that off, talking about square footage. We’ve talked for a long time about the level of square footage growth during the next five years in our traditional big box model being way different than it was the previous 10 years. So that’s not a surprise. Where you will see us continue to invest in square footage is where it makes sense in our connectivity businesses, like our Best Buy Mobile standalone stores. So when you pull apart that square footage story, it’s not the big box retailer continuing a run rate of new stores expansions like we’ve done historically. It’s leveraging the installed base of stores that we have; to Brian’s point, investing in the growth that we can drive in those stores through connections, and then building our square footage where appropriate to meet customer needs in other spaces where those big box stores don’t fit.

Brian Dunn

Management

And as we get to year-end, we’ll be updating you on how we’re thinking about that.

James Muehlbauer

Management

Second part of your question around the outlook for the quarter, as I mentioned, fourth quarter—as I mentioned earlier, we’ve got a variety of scenarios that play out. One thing you shouldn’t take away from that is that we’ve seen the results in the third quarter and now we’ve pulled the massive promotional lever and are going to drive the top line at the sole expense of margin. That’s not what we’re talking about here. What we’re doing, as we always do in every holiday season – we’re playing out our plans and adjusting to the market as we see it. The promotional activity that Mike predominantly talked about earlier was stuff that we already had planned in the mix for the most part for Q4, versus how we want to spread the TV promotions between Q3 and Q4. When you helicopter back all the way up and kind of set context for the year, we set out this year to expand our margins through changes in the operating model and to grow our top line with a little bit of market share growth. What we’re learning now as we’ve seen the customer play out is that our top line growth assumptions earlier in the year turned out to be too aggressive based on the environment that we see for demand, specifically in the TV industry and the computing industry overall; and we’re getting the activity that we wanted to get out of the margin expansion overall. So as we look structurally going forward, given where our model adds the most value per customers in representing those new launches of technology and those top tier brands, we feel great about the position that we’ve built around that and our ability to drive even more profit out of that. We find ourselves just more challenged in the top line from an industry standpoint than we set out, especially when a lot of that growth that did happen in the computing space is happening in a form factor that we don’t participate in proportionally as we do in the rest of the CE business. Thank you for your questions, Mike.

Bill Seymour

Management

Yeah, thanks Mike. This will be our last question, Operator. Thank you. One more question, please.

Operator

Operator

Okay. The next question is from the line of Anthony Chukumba with BB&T Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Anthony Chukumba – BB&T Capital Markets: Good morning. I just had a question related to the markets—the tough market share in video gaming. I mean, I certainly understand some of the market share losses in the TV category, some of the slowness in the TV category in the way of position there; also in PCs where not really chasing that opening price point. I guess I’m just a little confused in terms of video games because that doesn’t really seem—I mean, was there a lot of promotional activity? What do you attribute that to, because it seemed like you had the right product, you’re now in the used video game business, you reset a number of your stores to emphasize that category more and I’m just sort of wondering, kind of post mortem, why didn’t you get the market share that you thought you were going to in video games?

Michael Vitelli

Analyst

This is Mike Vitelli again, Anthony. The second part of your question is we’ve just started what we’re doing with trade-in and used games. We’re very pleased with the reaction that we’re getting in the about 800 stores that it’s in. And the stores where we actually have trade-in counters inside the gaming department, which is a few hundred, the exchange rate is much, much higher than the stores that don’t have it, so that’s something we’re going to continue to expand. So we’re pleased with that and getting us into that part of the business that we virtually have zero in today. As far as gaming in the third quarter, our hardware was good; our software was softer than we would have liked, and that’s basically because of the titles that were launched in that time. Last year at this time we were into a lot of Wii business and that kind of family category where we did strong in. We were lapping that against titles that were much more core gamer, which is the share and the business that we’re trying to go after with the trade-in and used. So that’s what happened in it, but we’re optimistic and very aggressive in what we’re doing in that space going forward.

Brian Dunn

Management

We also know, just to add, how important the trade-in value proposition to that core gamer, and that is an area and an opportunity for us that we’re very enthusiastic about for next year. Thank you for the question. Anthony Chukumba – BB&T Capital Markets: Thank you.

Bill Seymour

Management

Okay, that was the last question, Operator.

Operator

Operator

Okay ladies and gentlemen, that’s all the time we have for the question and answer session. I will turn it back over to Mr. Seymour for any closing remarks.

Bill Seymour

Management

Thank you Alicia, and thanks to our audience for participating in our third quarter earnings conference call. As a reminder, a replay will be available in the U.S. by dialing 800-406-7325 or 303-590-3030 internationally. The personal I.D. number is 4387850. The replay will be available from 11:30 a.m. Central time today through December 21. You can also hear the replay on our website at For Our Investors. Thank you for your attention. That concludes our call.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Best Buy Third Quarter FY11 Earnings conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you for using AT&T Conferencing.