Inside Best Buy’s push to get back to sales growth, cash in on AI craze

Best Buy on Tuesday announced new plans to try to reverse a two-year sales slump and cash in on a much-awaited replacement cycle of pandemic-era purchases and a fresh wave of innovation.

The consumer electronics retailer said it would add trained sales teams to key parts of its stores, create more YouTube videos to pique customers’ curiosity and kick off a marketing campaign with a fresh tagline: “Imagine that.”

In an interview with CNBC, CEO Corie Barry said customers told Best Buy that retailers’ store experiences and the technology they offer have “lost a bit of [their] sparkle.” She added the consumer electronics innovation has hit a dry spell.

“That is our big focus this year,” she said. “Getting all of that ‘new’ back in there.”

One of Best Buy’s major hopes to drive sales comes from artificial intelligence-enabled laptops and smartphones.

Still, the retailer doesn’t expect its sales to improve overnight. The company has reported 10 consecutive quarters of declining comparable sales, a key metric that takes out the impact of store openings and closures. Best Buy said in May that it expects comparable sales for the full year to be roughly flat or to drop by as much as 3% compared to the prior year.

Best Buy expects revenue to range from $41.3 billion to $42.6 billion, a decline from $46.3 billion last year. The range would put its revenue slightly below the $43.6 billion for the pre-pandemic fiscal year that ended in early 2020.

Barry said consumers are still “making very clear, value-based decisions.”

Shares of Best Buy have reflected the sales struggles: As of Monday’s close, the stock has fallen about 36% from its all-time high of $138, which shares hit during the Covid pandemic.

Steven Zaccone, an equity research analyst who covers retail for Citi Research, upgraded Best Buy’s stock from sell to buy in early June, in part due to an expected wave of new products.

But he acknowledged trends have become tougher to predict as consumers watch their wallets after the highest inflation in decades and get distracted by the uncertainty of this year’s presidential election.

“People who are focused on the near term would say the category is still declining,” he said. “So the call is based on the hope that you’re going to have a pivot to growth.”

Best Buy executives and investors have reason to feel optimistic. In each of the past two quarters, Best Buy’s laptop sales were higher than the year-earlier periods, early signs that a replacement and upgrade cycle may be starting.

Last week, shoppers’ purchases of consumer electronics like tablets, TVs and Bluetooth speakers helped drive sales to a record $14.2 billion across U.S. retailers’ websites during Amazon’s two-day Prime event, according to Adobe Analytics. It was a shift from last year when shoppers worn down by inflation took advantage of deals on household essentials. (Best Buy is among the retailers that have participated in the Amazon-created retail holiday by offering up its own deals.)

Best Buy’s ability to drive sales partly depends on its vendors. It’s been hungry for innovation that gives customers fresh reasons to come to its stores or website.

Over the past few months, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft have announced fresh launches that could create hype and drive customer traffic. Apple launched a collection of new iPads in May. Earlier this month, Samsung debuted its first “smart rings” with health-tracking features to compete with Oura’s own ring and Apple’s watch.

Elsewhere, Microsoft announced a collection of new PCs in May that include Copilot, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. The collection, which includes roughly 40 different items with about 40% exclusive to Best Buy, began to get delivered in mid-June.

Barry said the retail chain will benefit as customers see those leaps in technology and stores offer entirely new lines of business like rings that can track sleep, physical activity and more.

“Five years ago, we would have never carried jewelry in our stores and now we’re going to have a whole section of wellness-oriented products that you can wear in really unique ways,” she said.

Instead of rattling off TV and laptop dimensions, Best Buy staff will instead focus on helping customers understand how items can save them time or make life easier, Barry said.

At stores, customers will see more experiential displays that show off products including Tesla chargers, GoPro video equipment and Lovesac’s furniture later this summer. It will also add dedicated teams to its computing, appliance and home theater parts of the store, three key areas where Barry said customers tend to need support.

Barry said those store employees will underscore unique features that customers may not know about, such as a laptop with more than double the battery life, a washer/dryer combo that allows them to do two laundry loads at once or a home theater system that can make a workout space feel like a spinning studio.

On Best Buy’s app, customers will see a personalized home screen, a new “Discover” tab and an ability to set alerts for when an item on their wish list goes on sale.

The company plans to roll out more than 500 videos by the end of year on its YouTube channel, app and website. That’s triple the number that it added last year.

And as it gears up for back-to-school season, Best Buy will run advertising spots online, on streaming services and on social media that feature a “spokeshologram” named Gram.

“We are absolutely doubling down on what makes us different and I think we’re the only ones to kind of help bring that ‘What if?’ question to life for our customers,” Barry said.

Yet, Best Buy will be rolling out this sharper customer strategy on a tighter budget. Barry said on the company’s earnings call in May that the retailer plans about $750 million in capital expenditures this fiscal year, about $50 million less than last year. It is cutting spending with “refreshes” of all of its approximately 900 U.S. stores instead of major remodels and new store openings, she said.

The company’s dedicated teams in part of the store will be made up of its existing workforce and supplemented with employees from its vendors, she told CNBC.

Best Buy has faced a “Murphy’s law of headwinds” over the past three years, said Scot Ciccarelli, an equity research analyst at Truist Securities, referring to the adage that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” 

Among the company’s challenges, consumers have pulled back on pricier purchases like smartphones as everyday costs like food, gas and rent have gone up. Slower turnover in the housing market fueled by higher interest rates has dampened demand for home-related purchases like a bigger TV or new kitchen appliances.

But Ciccarelli said Best Buy’s unusually high sales during the pandemic have haunted the retailer the most. It threw off the typical cadence of shoppers replacing smartphones, laptops, home appliances and more, since many of them bought that tech when setting up their home offices, gyms and kitchens during the Covid lockdown.

Plus, as consumer electronics brands contended with temporarily shuttered factories and clogged supply chains during the pandemic, they debuted less game-changing tech. Without those advancements, Best Buy has been stuck competing on price as it sells roughly the same devices as competitors like Amazon and Walmart, particularly if customers have little reason to touch or feel a product before buying, Ciccarelli said.

Consumer electronics have been a weaker category of retail, as sales had fallen 4% in dollars and 5% in units year to date as of the end of June compared to the year-ago period, according to Circana, a market research firm that tracks point-of-sale data across major U.S. retailers. The market research firm’s definition includes most major devices like TVs, tablets and audio equipment, but excludes some categories that Best Buy sells, like home appliances.

However, consumer electronics spending is up 5% this year compared with the same pre-pandemic period in 2019, according to Circana.

Some of increase comes from higher prices of computers, TVs and other items, said Paul Gagnon, consumer technology industry advisor for Circana. For example, he said the average price spent on items in the headphones category has jumped 60% compared with 2019 as customers gravitated toward wireless ear buds like Apple’s Airpods or headband-style wireless headphones.

Consumer electronics’ biggest sales season is still ahead. About 57% of the category’s sales have historically come in the second half of the year, according to Circana data.

And the biggest days for consumer electronics are still ahead in the back-to-school and holiday seasons.