Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Scot Ciccarelli: So, Corie, when we kind of think about — this company has taken a lot of cost out over the last, gosh, decade plus. I think one of the question on last year is always, how much is really left to kind of scheme without kind of cutting into muscle like, is there a framework you can provide us to just kind of think about additional costs cuts from here?

Corie Barry: It just looks fascinating. So two things, one, the model is always evolving, and there are always new and interesting and different ways to take cost out. I would use — one of the things that we’ve been talking more about lately is outlets. That is a unique and differentiated customer experience. And we’re pulling different customers in who are finding great value and we see a recovery rate. We’ve said this before, that’s 2 times what we would see if we were selling sideways or selling it outside our own channel. Cost reduction is not always about expense reduction. It is often about finding flaws in the experience and then making opportunity kind of out of those flows. Many of our cost reduction efforts actually have ended up and, I would argue, in better employee experiences.

If you take some of the TV damage work that we’ve done over time, nobody wants to bring home a damaged TV, and there’s a huge amount of cost in that for us. And so, I think what we are trying to do is continuously assess our model. And then given some of the advancements we’re seeing, there continues to be opportunity. We see opportunity ahead in how we run our call centers as an example. And that’s a space where we’ve been able to pull cost out and have better customer NPS and experiences. So, this isn’t I think sometimes it’s a zero-sum kind of game that people play in their heads with cost reduction. But I think what the team is doing is really creatively finding kind of flaws in our system. And because it’s always evolving, there’s always something that we’re learning from and evolving.

So, I’m really proud of the work that the team has done, and I think we continue to have opportunity. And with that, yes, you bet. I’d love to thank you all so much for joining us today. We look forward to updating you on our results and progress during our next call in May. Thank you, and have a great day.

Operator: Thank you for joining today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines.