Best Buy, Schulze Agree to Extend Bid Deadline
courtesy Best Buy Co. Inc.The weekend deadline for Richard Schulze to make an offer for Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has been extended to February 28, according to reports at CNBC.com and Reuters. Schulze, who founded the company in…
The weekend deadline for Richard Schulze to make an offer for Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has been extended to February 28, according to reports at CNBC.com and Reuters. Schulze, who founded the company in 1966, had been expected to make an offer of $5 billion to $6 billion for Best Buy this weekend.
The extension has been granted to give Schulze a look at Best Buy’s fourth-quarter and full-year results for the year ending in January. Best Buy is scheduled to report earnings on February 28, the same day as Schulze’s extension expires.
Best Buy had a dismal third quarter, posting a net loss of $0.04 per share and a same-store sales decline of 4.3%. The company has tried to combat “showrooming” — shoppers using smartphones to compare prices while in the store and then making the purchase either online or at another store — by giving sales staff more authority to match prices. That is a customer-friendly approach, all right, but it plays havoc on margins.
Shares of Best Buy are down more than 13% today at $12.20, after rising by more than 15% yesterday on news that Schulze’s offer would be forthcoming this weekend. The stock’s 52-week range is $11.41 to $27.95.
Paul Ausick
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Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.
He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.