Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Forbes: Good morning Corie and Matt. I wanted to focus on computing and home theater trends during the third quarter. I think you called out in the release, the weakness in those categories on a year-over-year basis, but it looks for the category detail in the press release that the trends improved on a 3-year basis. So, curious if you could just expand on what drove that reacceleration? And then as my follow-up question, is this reacceleration part of the reason to restart the share repurchase program, or any color on what gives you the confidence to do so?

Matt Bilunas: Sure. Yes, computing, I will start with that. I think it was actually a large driver of a sales decline in Q3. But compared to FY €˜20, it was up 23%. So, we are still seeing very strong growth from the pre-pandemic period. We have seen a very large growth in the installed base over the past couple of years. Clearly, it’s now being impacted by the level of the normalization, if you go from the spend. We are actually seeing a good start to Apple Plus program. We are actually seeing some customers mix towards some of the latest products versus opening price points. So, it’s still relatively small and new, but that’s a good start. Gaming continues to be a strong growth area compared to pre-pandemic in the computing space.

So, so much of the gaming world is now kind of blending between gaming consoles and the computing arena and innovation continues on, and we expect that to continue. So, still down year-over-year, but still good strength and a great opportunity ahead of us. TVs, as you expect home theater did have negative comps as well. TVs or promotions are up on a year-over-year basis significantly. A lot more stronger inventory positions from our customers. And so we are still very confident about TVs going forward. Holiday is always a great environment for TV. ASP is down a little bit year-over-year. But again, we are seeing good mix into higher television sizes and premium products over the last couple of years. So, really encouraged by what the business could offer.

I think to the confidence of the share repurchase question, I think we €“ I think appropriately just took some time to understand the environment ahead of us on last year’s €“ in last quarter, just to make sure we were appropriately planning for the holiday period, giving our self enough space on inventory investment and where we need to sit from a working capital perspective and feel confident about our position in Q4 and where our inventory sits. And it is an establishment of confidence on where we sit financially and as we head into next year or so.

Steve Forbes: Thank you.

Matt Bilunas: You bet.

Operator: We will now move on to our next question from Seth Basham at Wedbush Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Seth Basham: Thanks a lot and good morning. My question is on Totaltech. You mentioned that members are tracking a little bit lower than your expectations. You have been able to parse that out between the slower sales and demand environment versus attributes of the program?