百思買 (BBY) 2007 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to Best Buy's conference call for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007.

[OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS] As a reminder, this call is being recorded for playback and will be available by 12:00 p.m.

Eastern time today.

[OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS]

I would like to turn the call over to Jennifer Driscoll, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Eric.

Good morning, everyone.

We hope you enjoyed the on hold from the Police, who's concert tour Best Buy is sponsoring.

We appreciate your participation in our fiscal fourth quarter conference call.

This morning, we have five speakers on the call.

Brad Anderson, our CEO will start us off with our overall strategy for growing our business.

Brian Dunn, President and CEO will give you an update on our progress of building customer relationships last quarter and how we plan to deepen those relationships in the coming year.

Bob Willett, CEO of International will touch on our International business results for the fourth quarter and share our international plans for the next 12 to 24 months.

Darren Jackson, our Chief Financial Officer, who also heads up our growth groups, will describe how he thinks about Best Buy Mobile, Best Buy for Business, and other emerge areas.

Last, Jim Muehlbauer, CFO of our domestic segment will elaborate on our fourth quarter results and add color to our annual guidance for fiscal 2008.

As is our custom, we'll extend our year end call to 75 minutes so that we can have extra time for answering your questions about the Company.

We request that you ask only one question per person and will keep you on the line in case clarification is need.

If you do have a second question, we respectfully request that you return to the queue after your question has been answered so that more callers have a chance to participate.

We would like to remind you that comments made by me or by others representing Best Buy may contain forward-looking statements which is subject to risks and uncertainties.

Our SEC filings contain further information about factors that could cause actual results to differ from management's expectations.

Please be aware that as usual, the media are participating in this call in a listen-only mode.

With that I give you Brad Anderson, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Jennifer.

This morning we reported fiscal 2007 earnings of $2.79 per diluted share.

That's up 23% from the $2.27 per share in our prior fiscal year.

Our fourth quarter top line results were better than expected.

Comparable store sales rose by 6% in the quarter.

This gain reflected stronger than expected results in December and in February.

For the year, our earnings were at the high end of our original range with margin pressures more than offset by expense leverage.

We are proud of these results, which we achieved amid a tough competitive environment and we thank our employees for doing their best to serve the needs of our consumers.

Our focus for the last few years has been putting the customer at the center of everything we do and we realize that we may not have been completely clear on where we are in this journey.

My focus today is going to be more on sharing more about our journey with you as well as the implication that it has on our growth plans.

Customer centricity is the core of our strategy globally.

That has not changed.

What is changing, however, is that we're realizing that customer centricity requires us to think differently about our business even as we differentiate ourselves more from our competition.

I would like to compare customer centricity with the conventional wisdom in our industry, a wisdom that we had adopted as recently as five years ago.

The conventional wisdom in our industry is that success begins with an insight on a growing market, like flat panel televisions.

Then the retailer puts all of the resources behind that point of view.

If you do a better job than your competitors at selling the products to as many customers as possible, you will gain share and grow earnings.

This approach is almost independent from a consideration of what the customers' needs are and how they're ultimately served by the product.

We believe that a better business model, and although it is a lot harder to do, is to start with a view of the customers, including their problems and desires.

We try to match that against everything we know about solutions that now exist or ones that could be created.

Then our job becomes figuring out how to get customers the right solutions for them.

We rely on our employees plus our network of vendors and outside partners to do this work.

And if we do it really well, these solutions may give us something unique in the marketplace, something that truly allows us to be differentiated.

It's a stark difference in whom we serve and how we serve them.

We see ample evidence in the ecosystem that the conventional wisdom is failing today.

Other retailers in our space are closing stores and in some cases closing shop.

While we do not yet consider ourselves terribly affected with customer centricity, we are seeing the consumer movement towards our brands.

Brian will explain that in a moment.

We believe that the consumer movement is a result of our recent investments which have enabled us to swim through water that has been more turbulent for others than it has been for us.

We view the world today as a large, open set of customer problems, wants, needs, and desires.

Not all of which are confined to consumer electronics.

So our business broadly defined is about meeting the needs and wants of customers.

And we believe that our current assets give us a better shot at solving customer problems than we've ever had before.

Specifically, our assets include 140,000 engaged employees, valuable relationship with vendors across the world, and emerging partners like Accenture, Apple, and CarPhone Warehouse and all of the other relationships that our people have throughout the ecosystem, from Asia to the Silicon Valley.

We also have a sizable cash balance and all of these assets are at our disposal as we envision how we will deepen our relationship with customers and increase shareholder value.

Now based on what we've learned, our desire is to accelerate our growth strategy, be more aggressive, and broaden how our people define our business.

Moreover, when we knock on doors today looking for partners who can help us satisfy customer needs, those doors are opening at an unprecedented rate.

We can use this platform both to expand what we can do today and do in the future for our consumers.

We have the confidence to push harder because we've been getting terrific results in the areas where we have already begun to push.

Many examples come to mind.

The North American expansion of Geek Squad, our dual branding strategy in Canada, our work with Microsoft on Vista, our growth into China, Best Buy for business and Pacific Sales.

Technology is changing fast and it isn't easy to predict where it will go and our ecosystem is also undergoing large amounts of change.

The good news is that that change has served us wet well in the past and we see many more opportunities on the horizon.

So our plan is simple.

We'll attempt to anticipate where the customer's needs and wants are and take our investments there so that we can deepen our customer relationships profitably.

We're also spending more time getting understanding of the unique capabilities of our employees and those that they bring to work each day so that we can put more of those capabilities to work on those unmet customer needs.

As we will grow, we will continue to be opportunistic in our share repurchases and we'll also consider acquisitions.

Whatever is the best use of our resources based on what we see in the marketplace.

We are increasingly confident that a prudent acquisition strategy can help us grow shareholder returns.

Through our experiences with Musicland, Magnolia, Future Shop, and the Geek Squad, we've learned what works and what doesn't work.

The obvious failure in that group is Musicland, but the rest of our acquisition strategies have been highly successful and we think it's been a great learning journey for us.

As a result of our experiences, we've changed our lens in terms of how view acquisition candidates.

First thing we look for is the ability to acquire new customer relationships, which we can use and leverage.

The second is that the skill sets of the Company acquired can help us expand our capabilities for serving the unmet customer needs we've identified.

And finally, we look at whether the Company has an effective culture and one that we admire.

This is the lens we're using in evaluating acquisitions that have worked for us in the past and we think will put us in good stead looking into the future and it's the lens we most recently used in looking at Pacific Sales, Five Star, and Speak Easy.

with that I would like to turn it over to Brian Dunn to talk about our connections with our customers.

Brian.

Thank you, Brad.

I would like to begin my remarks by giving credit where credit is due, to our people.

Again last year you rose to the challenge facing us on multiple fronts in the marketplace and again you delivered a strong performance.

Your hard work and service of our customers allows us to accelerate down the parallel path that has defined Best Buy's journey for years.

to win today while aggressively preparing for tomorrow.

Congratulations and thank you.

As Brad said, we think about our business differently than we used to.

Five years ago, we, like so many in our industry began every conversation from the sales floor to the Boardroom with a product in mind.

Today, we genuinely try to begin everything conversation with a customer in mind.

And more specifically, with a customer's needs, wants, and desires.

We see the world today not as a portfolio of products, but as a portfolio of customers with real problems that we are uniquely able to solve.

We start with the problem and we work upstream to use our network of people and partners so solve it.

We know that customers have more options than ever in seeking solutions for their problems.

We know, for example, that many customers love to shop in our stores, but many want to be served online, over the phone, and in their homes and offices.

Frankly, they don't differentiate.

They just want to engage with someone who will understand who they are and what their unique demands are.

Every customer is different, but here is something that is consistently and increasingly true.

They simply will not tolerate a sterile transactional experience.

This is great news for Best Buy, because we believe we're in a unique position to be the customers' advocate and fulfill the promise of technology for them and we believe firmly that this strategy forms the core of a sustainable growth engine for Best Buy.

Let me just take a minute to back that up with some facts.

In 2007, we believe we grew our market share to an all-time high of over 20% and we grew share in categories across the store.

Categories like flat panel TVs, gaming, and notebook computers.

We increased membership in Reward Zone to almost 18 million members and let me remind you that Reward Zone members are more loyal than nonmembers, they visit us more frequently, and they spend more per store visit.

Finally, we further solidified our position as the preferred brand for consumer electronics and improved our score in the ACSI, the American Customer Satisfaction Index by 5 points to a score of 76 from a score of 71.

A jump of 2 points in a given year is considered significant, a jump of 5 is almost unprecedented, and it goes directly back to the work of our store teams and the teams that support them.

Customers are telling us that the interactions they engage in with our people are getting better and better all the time and they're returning more often for additional purchases.

This year, we intend to build on this momentum and continue to work to thrill our customers.

Not only are we opening 95 U.S.

stores in the coming year, but we're especially excited about some specific solutions we know our customers care about.

People love entertainment and they love the flexibility of flat panel in their family rooms and all throughout their homes.

We're there for them with an array of end-to-end home theater experiences, whether that's a great-looking flat panel at a great price, or a fully installed, fully-integrated home theater room, or something in between.

Gaming will be huge this year and we'll be with our customers every step of the way.

Whether that means building an HD gaming experience for them or helping them sort through the explosion of new titles this year.

For those who want the benefits of the new Vista operating system but are maybe a little unsure about making the transition, we have Geek Squad, a tremendous asset in serving our customers.

While I'm on the subject of customers, I would like to take a moment to announce with great pleasure that we'll be expanding our relationship with Apple in 2007.

We'll be offering Apple computers in 200 stores by this fall.

It might sound paradoxical mentioning Apple alongside PCs and Vista, but it's not.

It's an excellent example of standing up for the customer and providing choice.

In fact this partnership illustrates the network I described at the beginning of my remarks, a network of people and companies inspired to serve customers and to change the way business is done.

We intend to earn the position in the center of that network.

And by the way, I know we're not there yet.

We're still learning the fundamentals of this.

The discipline of building everything from the customer back and unleashing the power of people in service with that customer, but we will earn that position because every day we will honor our own center.

The one overarching priority for Best Buy, the relationship between our people and the customers we serve.

With that I turn it over the Bob Willett.

Thank you, Brian.

Good morning, everyone.

Brian talked about the movement of consumers to our brands and nowhere was that more true than in Canada.

I would like to begin with a fourth quarter recap for Canada and China and then give you taste of what's ahead in fiscal 2008 for our international endeavors.

Our Canadian business reported revenue growth of 22% for the fourth quarter, including a comparable store sales gain of 14%.

Five years ago, when it was a $2 billion business, Future Shop's ambition was to reach $5 billion.

The talented leaders their fought for the rights to operate a dual branding strategy and won.

They had their challenges along the way, but succeeded in creating an operating model for running two distinct brands.

This year they came within $100 million of their $5 billion goal and they've got a lot of momentum.

The past year we boosted our Canadian operating profit rate by roughly 120 basis points.

We believe the improvement reflects efficiencies from the headquarter's restructuring, advertising efficiencies, and leverage on very strong revenue growth.

We also credit our renewed focus on the core business and incorporation of more customer and employee insights into our decision-making.

In fact, as we've learned in other places, deep and broad employee understanding of the business model was critical to driving this success.

Clearly, our dual branding strategy is attracting more customers to the Company.

The Canadian team has worked hard to drive the differentiation of the two chains and consumers are responding to these changes.

Both brands are growing market share.

The team has learned a ton during the five years it's operated two brands.

That experience coupled with greater customer analytics is helping us better define customer segments for each brand and develop end-to-end solutions for them.

Moreover, this dual brand experience can help us across the globe.

We believe it can help us attract a higher market share in China and other markets we may choose to enter over time.

So congratulations to Kevin and the team in Canada.

Our international results for the year include seven months of business from Five Star and four days from our sole Best Buy store in China.

Our Chinese retail business showed a modest loss for the year as a small profit from Five Star was more than offset with preopening costs associated with launching the Best Buy brand in China.

The China business, which is less seasonal than our domestic business carries a lower gross profit rate because of the unique role vendors play in this marketplace, where retailing is different than in the states.

But it also carries a lower SG&A rate since so many employees are paid by the vendors.

We are using our customer centric lens to development and experiment with new retail operating models in China that may better satisfy customers.

We anticipate that this will result in earnings improvements over time.

As we look to fiscal 2008, we are planning a careful expansion of our international footprint.

In Canada, we plan to open 12 to 14 stores and maintain our pace of double digit revenue growth.

We anticipate making greater use of the Company's infrastructure, including skills and price optimization, private label, loyalty programs, home theater installation, and the outsourcing of IT.

We plan to reset key areas inside Future Shop stores as well.

We also anticipate a more modest amount of operating income rate expansion in Canada given the investments that we are planning to make in new store openings and the infrastructure.

We feel very good about our position with our two brands in Canada.

In China we plan to open 20 to 23 Five Star stores focusing on tier two cities this year.

We also plan to open several lap stores for Five Star, testing an alternative employee model and introduce more private label good.

We plan to open a couple more Best Buy stores in China as well over the course of the next 12 to 18 months.

For fiscal 2008, we expect China to contribute more than $1 billion of revenue and be modestly profitable.

A bit of a feat during the rapid growth phase for any business, particularly in an environment of such rapid change.

Our international expansion is to learn carefully and scale fast.

We will do that not only through stores, but in some cases through services with or without stores.

We are pleased with our two joint venture with carphone warehouse.

These include our Best Buy Mobile stores in the states, which Darren will cover later, and our Geek Squad presence in the U.K.

As of March the 5th, 14 CarPhone Warehouse locations in London began offering Geek Squad services and we're also using broadband to deliver computer services to the market.

We are pleased with our progress with both joint ventures to date.

Right now as we look out, we see a strong team of international leaders, a clear strategy and vision with knowledge and confidence from the early results in Canada and China.

As we look out over the next two years, you can expect to us to consider other international markets beyond Canada and China.

Over time, we will explore other geographies where we could attract a sizable consumer market and earn a fair return while developing a cadre of highly competent global leaders and taking offshore learnings back and forth.

We believe that international expansion is one of the key ways we will meet the growth goals of the Company.

So you will see as greenfield lab stores in two other countries within the next 12 to 18 months, specifically Mexico and Turkey.

For fiscal 2008, our growth agenda requires that we develop customer value propositions, evaluate a multibrand approach, look at partnerships, recruit local leaders, and define our entry strategies whilst driving results in Canada and China as already described.

We also plan to continue our work with our supply chain and IT transformations, as they are the backbone of any successful international strategy.

Thanks for listening.

With that I give you Darren Jackson.

Nice job, Bob.

Okay, we're about halfway home.

Growth has always been an integral part of the Beth Best Buy story and our culture.

Fiscal 2007 was no exception.

We were pleased with the investments we made and the talents, the capabilities, the markets, and probably most importantly the options for future growth that came with them.

We thought it would be helpful to summarize our capital investment decisions in fiscal 2007.

We generated $1.8 billion in cash from operations and we reinvested all of it.

We invested more than $700 million in our core business.

We added 96 new stores, we remodeled 300 plus home entertainment departments, enhanced our supply chain, and completed other capital investments.

We invested nearly $600 million in acquisitions to gain access to new customers and markets.

That total includes $200 million for our entry into China via the Five Star purchase and $400 million for our Pacific Sales acquisition.

Finally, we returned in excess of $750 million to our shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends.

We are pleased to be in a position to make all of these investments.

Our investment priority is ensuring that the core Best Buy business continues to grow with attractive returns.

We expect acquisitions to provide access to material growth markets and accretive capabilities that allow us to capitalize on unmet customer needs while generating acceptable returns.

Finally, returning cash to our shareholders is key at opportunistic times.

The future growth agenda of Best Buy touches every corner of our enterprise.

Bob highlighted our entry into China, which is a $100 billion consumer electronics retail market and growing.

Our interest in Mexico and Turkey.

A core growth engine in the United States has been new stores, services, and full solutions.

Like Geek Squad we are now augmenting with the addition of 200 Apple Stores within a Store.

In addition, our growth groups offer a number of exciting options.

Best Buy for business provides access to $110 billion of annual small business market technology and services.

Small business customers today lack an integrated provider and services are inconsistent at best.

Today we have more than $1 million Best Buy for business Reward Zone members who have unmet needs and wants.

We are building our direct sales capability and our in-store experience with 290 in-store kiosks.

We also will be adding a compelling customer value proposition with our Speakeasy acquisition.

Best Buy Mobile provides us access to a $50 billion market that is targeted at an ever-changing mobility needs.

Honestly, it's a space which we underachieve for our customers, which is reflected in our market share.

It is a place where our joint venture partner Carphone Warehouse is world class.

We are working together to transform the experience for customers here in the states.

To date, we are very encouraged by the customer response to our converted and stand-alone stores and we plan to launch an additional 150 to 200 more stores and converted stores this year.

Pacific Sales and Magnolia provide us access to the premium customer markets, which we estimate to be $30 billion annually.

This will be a year of significant growth for Pacific Sales as we expand the store base from 14 to 19.

It's a small number of stores but a good stretch for this high-end retailer acquired just a year ago.

Like our Magnolia stores, Pacific Sales has a unique capability to serve the more affluent customer, primarily with kitchen and bath products.

Long-term, we can envision growing this brand to 200 stores in order to serve the market better nationally.

Finally, Best Buy financial services will allow us to build off of the success of our customer loyalty program, which has attracted nearly 18 million Reward Zone members.

Reward Zone MasterCard and Private Label credit products can improve the customer experience, drive brand loyalty, and add profitability as we build more compelling value propositions for our customers.

Collectively, our domestic and international growth agenda has opened the door to nearly $300 billion in new market and customer opportunities.

We are early in the journey but optimistic in the future profit potential of these markets.

To conclude, we are 40 years into our growth story, which has yielded nearly $36 billion in revenue and $2 billion in operating profit.

Our growth over the years often has come from challenging the conventional wisdom, following the customer, and constantly adapting our growth model.

We believe that this approach will serve us well in the future, serving a broader, deeper set of customer needs and wants.

It will require us to partner differently and network differently.

It will require us to rely more on our employee networks and customer networks for growth ideas as we look to the future.

With that I'll turn it over to Jim, happily, who will discuss the numbers and the outlook for next year.

Thanks, Darren, and good morning, everyone.

Our results were good for the quarter and for the year, for that matter.

As you saw in our news release this morning, we had some unique items in the quarter that roughly offset.

Overall, the earnings in the quarter pretty much played out as we expected, supported by slightly higher revenue and modestly lower margins than forecasted.

We were also very pleased to deliver both topline and bottom line results at the high end of our annual guidance.

I will highlight the key drivers of our performance in the fourth quarter and discuss our guidance for fiscal 2008.

Starting with the topline, we reported $12.9 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter and nearly $36 billion for the year.

The revenue gain was driven by a solid 5.9% comparable store sales gain for the fourth quarter, which is on top of the 7.3% gain in the fourth quarter last year.

Overall for the year, revenue grew 16%, including 2% coming from the 53rd week.

The revenue growth was driven by the addition of 86 net new stores, a 5% increase in comparable store sales, and acquisitions.

In addition to growing our revenue, we were also pleased to improve our market share in key categories like flat panel televisions, notebook computers, and gaming during the year.

The gross profit rate for the quarter declined 90 basis points.

This rate includes 15 basis points of benefit for gift card breakage related to certain states not reflected in the initial fiscal 2006 breakage.

This benefit came from the remaining states not covered in the amount we realized in the third quarter of last year.

Excluding gift card breakage, the gross profit rate declined 105 basis points, primarily driven by changes in the mix of business.

Let me give you some more color on these changes.

First, the addition of the China Five Star business was worth 20 basis points of the decline.

We will continue to see more of this through the first half of the year until we annualize the acquisition.

Second, was about 50 basis points from increased sales of gaming hardware and from growth in the online channel, both of which carry lower margins.

Frankly, revenue in these areas exceeded our expectations and helped to fuel our higher comp for the quarter.

The remaining 35 basis points of the reduction was driven by the promotional environment in the home theater area and to a lesser degree in CDs and movies.

Overall, the promotional activity in the quarter was in-line with our expectations.

For the year, the gross profit rate was 24.4%, which was consistent with our updated guidance for a 60-basis point decline from fiscal 2006.

As you recall, we started the year looking for an essentially flat rate.

As the business unfolded in the second half, we saw topline strength in lower-margin categories.

We also saw an opportunity to build our business in strategic categories during a more competitive environment.

These factors drove our revenue to the high end of our expectations and resulted in earnings that were at the top end of our range.

We continued our strong SG&A performance in the quarter.

We delivered 70 basis points of leverage or nearly 90 basis points when you exclude impairments, litigation, and business closure costs.

While these costs are an ordinary part of the business, they were above what we expected in the quarter.

In addition to the leverage on the strong revenue performance, the largest driver of SG&A improvement in the quarter was lower incentive compensation, which returned to a more normalized level.

We achieved this expense leverage while spending more on advertising in Q4 in support of the Vista launch, our services business, and Best Buy for business.

For the year, our SG&A rate was 18.8%, which represents a 90 basis point improvement over fiscal 2006.

All-in-all, our operating income rate for the quarter was slightly behind last year.

Gross margin rate decline largely due to the revenue mix offset the expense leverage we achieved.

To round out the quarter, we realized a $20 million gain or $0.03 of EPS on the sale of our investment in Golf Galaxy.

In addition, we realized a higher than expected tax rate of 36.2% due to a different composition of our taxable income by jurisdiction.

For the year, the tax rate was just slightly higher than we expected at 35.3% and we expect this rate will increase to approximately 36% in fiscal 2008.

Overall, as we look at the year, we saw the benefits of previous strategic investments paying off.

At this time last year, we were talking to you about focusing our energy and deploying ours assets against a more targeted list of work that would add value for our customers.

We did that and improved customer experience while also delivering 23% EPS growth in an environment that was, at times more competitive than we planned.

This tells us that we are investing in the right things.

This brings me to our financial outlook for the upcoming year.

The relationships we are building with customers coupled with a strong consumer interest in our core categories gives us continued optimism as we begin the year.

We expect another year of solid revenue and EPS growth.

Total revenue is expected to grow 9% to $39 billion, including a 3 to 5% comp sales gain for the year.

Our plans include approximately 95 new stores in the U.S.

and 35 stores internationally and a full year of sales from Five Star.

We expect customer interest to remain very high in exciting product groups like flat panel televisions, gaming, mobile computing, and services.

Further price decline in flat panel televisions, although more modest than last year, will continue to make this experience available to millions of incremental consumers.

We expect the consumer appetite for bigger and better TVs to continue this year, driving a double digit increase in flat panel comparable sales.

This gives us a ton of optimism about this cycle and the opportunities still in front of us to help customers with solutions.

We expect that continued industry trends of declining sales in analog televisions, CDs, and desktop computers will partially offset comp growth from the above areas.

From a gross profit rate perspective, we see both head winds and opportunities to make improvements in the coming year.

As you would expect, the addition of Five Star business will drive a decline in the first half of the year.

In fact, that decline will be slightly more pronounced in the first half as it is our lower volume portion of the year.

Continued strong customer interest in lower-margin business such as gaming hardware and notebook computers will help us grow more gross margin dollars, although they will reduce the rate.

And for the million-dollar question, yes we expect that flat panel TV pricing will compress modestly year-over-year, but less than last year.

I don't suspect that any of those are terribly surprising.

More importantly, we see opportunities in services and in the total basket across the enterprise to offset a portion of these head winds.

These are items that are within our control and in fact play to our strengths as employees focus on full customer solutions.

We see opportunities for stronger solution selling and better basket size in many growing categories, including flat panel televisions, gaming, and computing.

These solutions include growth in our services business, including Geek Squad, which is expected to positively impact our gross profit rate year-over-year.

In addition, we'll have a pretty promotional Q3 and Q4.

In total we expect a 30 to 40 basis point gross profit rate decline, which will be steeper in the first half versus the second half.

Similar to fiscal 2007, we expect a 60 to 70 basis point of SG&A leverage to more than offset the decline in the gross profit rate.

Our expected revenue growth and focused spending will help us leverage our infrastructure and advertising spending.

At the same time, we'll continue to build and deploy systems of technology to improve customer experience and our productivity.

Additionally, investments to grow our international presence, as Bob mentioned, will drive incremental SG&A spending in fiscal 2008.

For those reasons we do not expect to see the same rate of expense leverage as we experienced in the previous year.

In total we expect to drive approximately 30 basis points of operating income leverage in fiscal 2008 on top of the 23 basis points we delivered in fiscal 2007.

To assist you with your modeling, we expect comparable store sales growth early in the year to moderate from the strong 5.9% comp experienced in the fourth quarter.

Expense leverage will also be constrained by more new store openings earlier in the year compared with last year when the openings were more concentrated in the third quarter.

We project continued modest declines in our operating income rate during the first half of fiscal 2008, as we lap the strong rate gains from the previous year.

We believe that we have a significant opportunity to expand operating income leverage in the second half of the year, especially in the third quarter, as we anniversary the mix changes in the business and enjoy a more stable promotional environment.

In terms of earnings per share, we are forecasting $3.10 to $3.25, which is an average of 14% EPS growth for the year.

Our fiscal 2008 guidance also includes capital expenditures of 800 to $850 million as we continue to invest in new stores, improvements in the customer experience, IT, and our supply chain.

As always, this excludes potential acquisitions, including the recently-announced acquisition of Speakeasy, which is expected to close in the fiscal first quarter.

To conclude, we had a great year and we are very proud of our employees' hard work.

We have a wealth of assets at our disposal to continue to deepen relationships with customers and grow this enterprise.

As Brad said, we have a powerful network of relationships.

We have 140,000 talented and energized employees focused on the customer and we have a strong balance sheet.

We literally see a world of unmet customer needs that we can aggressively go after solving.

With that I'd like to open it up for questions and answers.

[OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS] Our first question comes from Matt Fassler with Goldman Sachs.

Thanks a lot and good morning.

Good morning, Matt.

I just want to dig a little bit deeper into your capital allocation discussion.

You talked about opportunistic buybacks.

How do you think about those opportunities in terms of stock price, times of year, and outlook?

And if you could also give us some color related to that as to the amount of cash that you like to keep on the balance sheet, just from an operating perspective.

Hi, Matt.

It's good to hear from you, it's Darren.

Thank you, Darren.

Yes.

So maybe a different way of asking that question, we didn't buy a lot of stock back in the fourth quarter.

It may have been lower than expectation and we understand that.

I think a way to think about it and the way that we've thought about it is that when we look at our capital allocation, I'd tell you the one thing hasn't changed.

Our priority continues to be to be out there looking for investment ideas that will return from a cost of capital something well north of what our cost of capital is today, which is, call it 10.5, 11%.

We continue to invest in the core business, we see very attractive returns, particularly coming out of -- I'll tell you, surprisingly coming out of some of the new stores that we're investing in today, particularly our 20Ks.

And that continues to be a focus for us in terms of how do you keep -- how do you keep investing in the core business and keep the ROICs up?

Two, you can see from our behaviors that we have a heightened sense of looking around for accretive acquisitions that both add opportunities with new customers and capabilities.

This year was more pronounced than prior years in the form of our investments in China, our investment in Pacific Sales, and more recently our investment in Speakeasy.

And underneath that, we bought a small company called AVI that added to our service capabilities that were relatively small.

So we have allocated more capital, per se, into how do we grow the business by recognizing that in order to collapse time, acquisitions have been a bigger part of the capital allocation this year.

I'd tell you, we continue to see opportunities to repurchase our stock.

In hindsight, there could have been more opportunity in the fourth quarter and we acknowledge that.

We'll be spending more time as we go into FY '08 looking at more pronounced stock repurchases and acquisition activity.

I would suspect when you peer out into the future and look at our capital allocation that this year we spent in excess of $1.8 billion.

That number will ratchet up considerably across all three of those dimensions in terms of core business, in terms of acquisitions, and in terms of stock repurchases.

So you would say that we should assume some level of acquisition, perhaps similar to what you did in calendar '06 on a go-forward basis?

That should be less the exception and more so the base case?

Matt.

I would love to tell you it's linear, but it's not.

I'd tell you, as we highlighted in our release today, we're strategically and surgically looking for places in the market where we see unmet customer needs, and candidly where our capabilities matched with the acquisition candidates capabilities are something that provides something unique and special for the customers.

And that's what we saw in Pacific Sales, that's what we in Speakeasy, candidly, that's what we saw as we went into China because clearly, Five Star's capabilities in China were a little bit better than ours for Minnesota.

Thank you so very much.

Thank you very much, Matt, next question, please.

Our next question comes from David Strasser with Banc of America.

Thank you.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the TV category.

A couple of questions, but it's all based on one -- it's coming down to one answer from you, so kind of like one.

The percentage of 1080P today and the trend where you think that's going, and in general what the difference in price is between 1080P and say 720 or your non-1080P if you take that altogether and assume a 20 or 25% decline or so in -- like, for like product year-over-year, where do you think ASPs come out in the TV category for next year relative to this year?

Mike Vitelli will take that one.

Still running my calculator.

Thanks for the question, but you did point out a number of things that are happening that are going to help the category as we move into next year.

The increase in technologies coming from our manufactures.

1080P, 127 hertz in LCD to help with the movement.

All of those are increasing the average ASP of television.

LCD is also increasing its ability to build larger sets and that's increasing the ASP of television.

Both of those start to offset the decline in cost per inch of large screen TVs and flat panel TVs, and they do start to moderate the acceleration that we saw in this year.

So we think the situation is going to be because of all of those factors, that we're still going to have a decline in flat panel TV prices, but they'll be more modest than last year.

Any sense of the magnitude of that, though?

Are we talking 10%, are we talking 5, 20?

What we believe is, and for us to speculate on the actual percent change is not in the best interest of the industry, our shareholders, or actually anyone because it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy as everyone wants to react to something we might speculate on.

We think that that's not a positive thing to do.

We know it's going to decline, but speculating to the exact rate is not helpful.

In the last two years, we've been wrong in terms of, it was much better two years ago, it was a little tougher this past year.

Let me ask you this last question and I'll let you go, but the difference in 1080P pricewise versus non1080P sets, how significant is that difference?

There's always a premium for new technology and it changes based upon the customer's reaction to it and what the manufactures can do in their pricing.

But there's a premium for 1080P.

There was a premium for 127 hertz.

There was a premium for cable card slots, that changes.

So it moderates and modulates during the course of a life cycle of a product.

I'm not going to get a number.

Thanks again, thank you.

Our next question comes from Gary Balter with Credit Suisse.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, Gary.

Good morning.

I'm going to focus my question on Geek Squad.

This was an area where a few years ago some of the analysts were writing about how its 50% operating margin was going to have a huge impact.

Jim in his comments mentioned for the first time it will positively impact gross margin.

Could you talk about what's going on in Geek Squad in terms of turnover employees, utilization, what's happening with the margins?

Anything that you want to share with us in that area would be helpful.

Thank you.

We'll start off with Jim Muehlbauer and then Sean Skelley.

Yes.

So, Gary, I did comment that we do expect growth in our Geek Squad business will help us improve some of the gross margin head rates we're going to see next year.

I think we've talked consistently over the last few years that Geek has been a predominant story not only from a customer standpoint, but also in the improvements in our margins.

When our margins in fiscal 2006 were up over 100 basis points, we talked a lot about the performance of Geek Squad.

We may not have have been as out loud about that during the last fiscal year, but we certainly continue to see growth in that space next year and we'll continue to see it mixed favorably into our business.

That's consistent, Jim, the last three years, Geek has been part of the gross margin expansion story.

It's not just coming into play this coming year.

That's correct.

On the question specifically about employee and turnover and the relationship with our employees.

We have seen relatively flat head count, a little bit down year-over-year.

Mainly that's focused on productivity and tools and competencies and capabilities.

We're still satisfied with our turnover rate, but we're actually naturally trying to make sure that those employees are highly engaged as they are the face to our customers.

We expect that number to be relatively flat in head count and we continue to kind of grow the quality of our employees in the engagements with our customers.

I think there's an important lens to look at as you look at Geek Squad or all of these in terms of our overall strategy of identifying a customer need and then providing a holistic solution to the consumer, we think is working for us in total in the marketplace.

As you try to break it off and look at is as a -- each of these as free-standing increments, that actually doesn't hold up.

The consumer is choosing a value proposition, our value proposition versus another and each of these things are components to that value proposition.

So when you look at the overall consumer, the overall performance of the Company, it's driven by how well our value propositions are holding up against our competition.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Gary.

Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Colin McGranahan with Sanford Bernstein.

Thank you, good morning.

Good morning.

I wanted to focus my question on the operating margin outlook.

First on the expense line, 60, 70 basis points is fairly impressive given a comp environment that looks like it's going to be in the 3 to 5 range.

And given that you don't really have the head count reductions this year that you had last year, can you give us a little bit more detail on where some of the drivers of that very strong leverage -- any detail you can give us there?

And then in terms of gross margin, given the fourth quarter performance down 105 and the results versus the guidance at the beginning of the year, what's your confidence interval around the 30 to 40 basis points and what could go right and what would you think would be a bad scenario taking into account that gross margin has deteriorated every quarter for the last four quarters.

Jim?

Colin, I'll try to pull apart those four different questions and maybe round them into how we're thinking about next year in total.

Let's start with SG&A.

We continue to see opportunities next year to leverage the capabilities that we've built around improving our productivity, both in our stores, with our labor management, whether it's Geek Squad or whether its our blue shirt labor in the stores and leverage that base on the 3 to 5% comp sales.

We also expect to continue to leverage our advertising spend year-over-year.

Consistently, we are looking at the IT capabilities that we built in the organization from a supply chain standpoint and leveraging the infrastructure we have in our warehousing.

A combination of those things across the board is what gives us confidence in that our gross margin -- I'm sorry, our SG&A leverage will continue next year.

We're also getting much sharper on where we spend our money against a focus set of priorities that we think will have the most impact from a customer standpoint.

Some of the headwinds that we'll see in SG&A, as Bob mentioned, as we continue to expand internationally, we'll be building infrastructure for those businesses and we'll be investing in businesses like our Best Buy Mobile and our Best Buy for business portfolio.

So we have things going in different directions, but I think we're getting much sharper overall in our spending, which is what gives us confidence around the SG&A rate for next year.

Jim, is the order you talked about, those in relative to the magnitude?

So would you say that labor management, dollar per hour productivity is the largest source of the 60 to 70?

Productivity leverage on our labor dollars across the board, both corporate and in the field would be the largest.

Advertising would be the second.

Okay, thank you.

Colin, I'd also build on that.

We're still in the middle of our outsourcing journey, so what we see coming up for next year, both in terms of things we were doing, in terms of progress we're making in IT, which was part of our original 50 basis point roadmap and we recently extended our partnership with Accenture to look at our GNFR outsourcing relationship and we see new opportunities as we look down the road.

Goods not for resale.

Goods not for resale, thank you, Jennifer.

To further take out costs over the next couple of years.

Okay.

Did you want to comment on the--?

Yes, I would be happy to comment of gross profit rate outwill become and some of the opportunities we see.

Clearly, Colin, as we look at the back half of the year, we will be anniversarying significant mix changes in our business that included things like Five Star, included the promotional environment we saw in Q3 and Q4.

Included mixing more heavily into lower margin items like gaming systems and notebook computers.

So we're going to have a little bit easier compares in the back half of the year.

Our op income rate in the first half of this year grew 70 basis points.

So that is -- it's our good fortune to have to lap that in the first half of this year, which is why we're looking at the phasing of operating income growth being more skewed to the second half of FY '08 than we experienced this year.

We're just flipping both ends of the performance.

Okay.

But even Five Star should be a drag even in the back half, because it's growing faster at a lower gross margin rate, right?

Yes, but it won't be nearly as much is it is in the front--.

Clearly.

Mix will probably still be negative, too.

Gaming is going to be bigger in the fiscal fourth quarter of fiscal '08 than it was in the fourth quarter of fiscal '07, right?

It depends on the availability of systems and what customer uptake is.

I think the key thing is the change year-over-year won't be as material as we experienced in the fourth quarter this year versus the fourth quarter of last year.

Actually, in gaming, you're beginning to get more software into the mix because you're now at -- in both the last two years, we've been at the very early stages of launches of new categories -- of new products that had very little software in the mix.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In order, that was Jim, Darren, and Brad.

We covered most of the OI lines, but there might be some more questions out there.

Next caller, please.

Next question comes from Gregory Melich with Morgan Stanley.

Hi, thanks.

I wanted to get back on the cash flow and what to really expect the investment goes into this year.

Could you just give us the breakdown on CapEx that 800, 850 million, what percentage is actually in stores, in IT, and in those different buckets you mentioned?

And basically where it's going internationally versus domestic?

Yes.

Happy to do that.

This one we'll pass over to Jim Muehlbauer, CFO Domestic.

Thanks, Greg.

We typically don't give out the details of where specifically we're applying our spending, but maybe it would help if I contextualize how we see the growth in CapEx FY '07 versus FY '08.

We expect it to roughly go up about $110 million year-over-year.

A predominant amount of that increase is really going to fuel higher levels of new store growth, both in the U.S.

and in internationally, as Bob mentioned.

We have been on a hiatus of new store growth in Canada in FY '07 and we are getting back on the new store growth engine in Canada next year, so that's eating up a part of our capital.

The other thing that we anticipate investing in is continuing our journey from an IT capability standpoint with our POS systems both in the U.S.

and in Canada and accelerating our investments in the supply chain space as we begin to redesign and optimize our supply chain network.

Those will be the key areas of increased investment.

We anticipate also having investments in areas such as services as we continue to build capability and productivity tools around these new growth businesses.

And did I hear you mention that of those three buckets that you're spending the cash flow investing in the core acquisitions and buybacks, dividends, that they should all be rising?

Did I hear that right?

You did.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

That was Jim and Darren.

Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Mitch Kaiser with Piper Jaffray.

Thanks, guys.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the competitive environment.

It sounded like, Brad, in your initial comments, maybe you smelled blood in the water a little bit.

You see Tweeter closing stores, Comp USA closing stores, just your thoughts there.

And then if you could just comment about what you're hearing from vendors, particularly on the TV side?

Well, I think you're -- I think -- I wouldn't want to use the phrase blood in the water, but we did refer to basically two things that we're probably at the zenith of the capability to get done in the marketplace with partners what the Company's ever had in experience maybe times five because our position is as strong as it is in the marketplace and suppliers see the -- what we can bring to the marketplace is very much in their vested interest.

So there is a -- one of the things that I think often gets missed by a relatively short horizon look at Best Buy is, what does the ecosystem -- what does a difficult ecosystem enable Best Buy to do?

Historically, a difficult ecosystem has always been wonderful for us.

Because if we've got more talent than our competition does, we can deploy that talent and increase our leverage in the marketplace.

And we think that the current environment that our strategy is extraordinarily strong and the assets we bring are very valuable to both our suppliers and other strategic partners that we can see on the horizon.

And that's part of the message of this call is essentially, we intend to seize the day.

So we've got a lot of capital, we've got a lot of talent, we've got a lot of alliances, we have a global point of view instead of a regional point of view and we have a competitive of market share gains in every market that we're in that are historically unprecedented for Best Buy.

We intend to leverage all of that in this upcoming year.

You don't see all of it, necessarily, in the budget because future potential acquisitions in terms of potential strategy and those kinds of things can't be placed, but we expect to fully exploit that.

Very helpful.

Thank you, Mitch, next question please.

Our next question comes from Brian Nagel with UBS.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you.

Good morning, Brian.

Just a quick question.

You commented in your prepared remarks that you expect comp store sales growth to moderate from the levels we saw recently, and your guidance for 2007 reflects that as well.

Was that more of a comment here on Q1 or throughout the whole year and then any specific category comments to back that up?

Thank you.

That comment was really more towards what we see in the first half of the year, clearly.

We feel very comfortable with that 3 to 5% comps for the year, but not unlike last area where we finished the fourth quarter with a 7.3 comp and then moved into the first quarter with a 4.8 comp.

We would not expect the same level of performance from a comp steals standpoint in Q4 to move into Q1 for a couple of really good reasons.

Number one, we know that a vast majority of our gift cards that get sold and redeem kind of come to fruition in Q4.

Plus, some of the strength we saw in our business around MP3s around the holiday given the fact that they're a great gift-giving item.

The other things that we also see in the comp sales is that I would love to ask Kevin and team up in Canada to deliver another 14% comp in Q1 like they did Q4, but as we lap strong numbers in Canada, that's probably not going to be realistic either.

So I think the other thing that we don't have a lot of visibility to in the marketplace tying back to some of Brad's comments is that we do have a number of competitors that will be closing stores over a period of time.

And we certainly think that there will be a short-term impact on our business as those inventory positions are rationalized in the marketplace, but those clearly will provide us opportunities as we get later into the year to build share in some of those businesses.

So a little bit lack of visibility as to what specifically is going to happen on that also.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jim.

For clarity, the last question was answered by Brad.

Next question, please.

The next question comes from Scot Ciccarelli with RBC Capital.

Hi, guys.

How are you?

Just fine, good morning.

Good.

You guys have made a bunch of references regarding acquisitions and obviously we've moved into China and sounds like we're going to be moving into Mexico and Turkey.

What is the appetite for a near-term earnings hit?

In other words, if you guys thought you had a big future opportunity, would you be willing to move into a market or get into a business which may be dilutive for a while.

Can you give us a way to think about that?

Well, I would just say that we don't see that on the horizon immediately, or don't see that on the horizon, but I think -- I hope we continue to operate this business as a long-term interest in the shareholders.

And if we saw something we believe was a clear long-term benefit we would seize that.

Bob, did you want to?

I think you said it and I think Darren actually covered it as well.

We are at a point in our development where we are not going to miss an opportunity to enhance our unique proposition around customer centricity.

We're not going to miss an opportunity.

Okay.

But in terms of -- obviously we're doing the Best Buy Mobile, some of these other things.

Is it fair to assume we shouldn't expect that to be significantly dilutive by any measure?

Well, that's all factored into the guidance we gave you today.

Yes.

The only thing -- we can't reflect anything that may transpire in the future.

We gave you the best picture we have today of where we think our expense structure goes.

Darren, did you want to--?

Scot, here's the way I would frame it.

That when we're peering out and looking at acquisitions, is it possible we could acquire something and take a near-term earning hit?

The short answer is yes.

As a matter of fact, in certain situations as we build capabilities and new businesses, we have taken an earnings hit to build those capabilities.

We've been able to manage it within the context of the larger Best Buy business and we think that as we look at different places for growth, what we found is that when we add these capabilities and have to invest in them over time that we take a point of view what would be the long-term value creation for the enterprise.

I think unless we take that point of view, what we'll do is we'll both pass on things that quite frankly we get scared because the near-term earnings hit is kind of missing the point of the long-term potential.

I don't want you to read anything into that that we're ready to jump into something big and sustain a long-term hit to earnings, but I think we'd be misleading you if we said if we saw a big opportunity to grow the capabilities and the long-term value of the enterprise because of the fit of the principals of where we see where we can create value, we would do it.

But to date we have been fortunate to be able to buy a number of companies where we've been able to essentially absorb the near-term as we build capabilities to get to a better place long-term.

Okay, great.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Thank you.

That was Brad, Bob, and Darren.

Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Danielle Fox with Merrill Lynch.

Thanks, good morning.

Could you talk a little bit about how you're evaluating the returns on your investment in China?

So for example, do you look at the financial impact from your overall presence meaning both sourcing and stores, or do they each have to meet their own criteria?

Maybe I'll tee it up and then I'll have Bob talk about China specifically.

So when we thought about our investment in China, we actually saw three opportunities to increase value for the enterprise.

One is the most obvious in terms of the purchase of Five Star allowed to us acquire a management team and a team that has an understanding of the customer and the market and quite frankly was growing fast and already was modestly profitable.

And it's not unlike our Future Shop acquisition, where how do we leverage those existing capabilities, recognizing it was already profitable at the time that we bought it to grow the business over time.

I think that's in some ways more conventional in terms of how do we go stores.

The other thing that we saw was the opportunity to enhance our relationship with some of the Chinese vendors.

If you could think about it, there are many sourcing capabilities and opportunities in China where exposure to the North American market would be very valuable.

And so we're trying to understand on a global scale how to build those relationships and that access that will be worth value long-term.

Then three, one that we don't talk a lot about but that Bob talks quite a bit about is that we are going to bump into capabilities that they have that we don't have.

And that those capabilities will be able to be transplanted back into the U.S.

and in other markets that will allow to us grow our enterprise.

Candidly, that has been a pleasant surprise when we think about our Geek Squad acquisition.

That has been a pleasant surprise as we look at Pacific Sales and their vendor relationships in terms of growing our high end business.

But that's a third piece that gets missed a lot in terms of growing internationally.

What I'll do is I'll turn it over to Bob to talk about maybe some of the very specific what we've seen in China and how we're evaluating performance at this point forward.

Darren covered it very nicely, but just to add a little bit of flavor to it.

Clearly, we are very analytical and look at everything individually to make sure that there is a good chance, a high probability of payback at everything we do.

But the reality is going into a market like China, the sourcing helps the stores, the stores helps sourcing.

In other words, you have to look at them on a combined basis and look at a combined P&L.

We are clearly seeing significant amounts of small Chinese manufacturers that have some quite unique product that we're assessing in our Five Star and Best Buy store and we see that product traveling back here to the U.S.

and Canada.

So we see in all those opportunities to both retail locally in China, but also to take the goods and products from China elsewhere in the world.

So it becomes very much us playing the right and proper thing in the marketplace as well as having a financial benefit.

And the learnings are phenomenal.

We've had some just incredible learnings through Private Label, particularly.

And if there's one area where we are significantly underdone, and this is generally speaking in the entire U.S., the use of Private Label and exclusive brand is a huge opportunity for it.

We are actually still very small in this area and the sourcing office in China has done an incredible job inside of four years and produced some great product, but the opportunity is probably five fold from where we are.

So that's the way we look at it.

And wherever we go, we'll always not just look at retail, but we'll also look at sourcing.

And we're doing that in one of the other countries that we're talking about at the moment, namely Turkey.

That's wonderful.

I'm just wondering, as well, more specifically if you have return hurdles, for example, like weighted average cost of capital, your discussion focused a lot on the strategic benefits as well as touched on some of the financial benefits, but just in terms of hurdle rates as well.

I was wondering if there were specific targets and whether or not you've shared them?

Yes.

So the short answer, we absolutely look at the returns on these investments.

The easy one is and the most predictable one is when we make capital investments locally in our stores, and we've said this before, seen returns upwards of 19% ROIC in terms of those stores.

When we look internationally and look at different growth businesses that are not consistent with our model, we'll adjust the cost of capital to reflect the risks in the market and the type of investments to ensure that we are getting a return and we haven't given out a stated international return or a stated if you look at Speakeasy, that has more of a telco type of return hurdle.

What we do do is back up using our cost of capital as an enterprise to understand and the local cost of capital how much value creation is in each one of these acquisition candidates.

As Bob said in China, it is early days but we are both in terms of how we're traveling in China to both topline and bottom line ahead of our expectations.

I would tell you in our other acquisitions that we were at or slightly above our expectations to date.

If you look at this from a lens of customer centricity, it means that you've got two enormous assets that you can bring back to your customers in every mark that you serve.

One of which is, you've got whatever you spot as a particular need in a marketplace, it increases the menu of potential solutions.

So if we can't find the right solution from a supplier, we can create our own solution because of the work we've done in China.

Second, it allows the folks who are doing our acquisition in China to experiment with their own marketplace to help us spot things we miss in terms of customer solutions in North America.

So there's another major strategic umbrella that this thing is accomplishing for us and we're at the very early stages of.

Just a bit more context to what Darren talked about.

In the business here in the U.S., we have this great process, yellowbook, bluebook process of assessing stores on an individual basis in terms of return.

We've taken that same process to Canada, taken that same process to China.

We've had to harmonize the data somewhat but the principals and process are exactly the same and the analytics are just as exacting using different weighted average costs of capital.

Very helpful.

I think we have time for one more question, please.

Our final question comes from David Schick with Stifel Nicolaus.

Good morning, David.

Good morning.

Just wanted to hear more on the attachment rates for installation, in particular, and how you guys feel about the Pledge ad campaign.

So I think first and foremost, it really is a solution for the customer, so as you think about the whole product need, we saw in home theater installation triple digit growth for Q4 and we saw in Geek Squad specifically double digit growth and actually the biggest month ever in the month of February for that business.

HD Done Right, do you want to comment on that, Mike?

No, I think that campaign, the HD Done Right and the I Pledge campaign are almost iconic in reaching out to what Brian said earlier is what we believe is our greatest asset of connecting our employees with our customers.

That campaign was all about the blue shirt and what they're going to do for the customer, which is what their needs and wants is, which is to get HD done right.

I thought it was one of the best campaigns in capturing the spirit of what Best Buy is trying to do in the marketplace and what we were successful with last year.

And it's fair to say, Mike, what we saw is a extraordinary pickup in the attachment rates for the whole solution that was above our expectations and maybe more importantly, return rates coming down significantly, which if you think about customer satisfaction, the ability to get the TV installed and stay in home without having to bring it back to our store is enormous win all around.

So do you think done right, that campaign and focus in the stores was part of what drove that customer satisfaction index improvement?

I think that's absolutely true.

Because I think the -- it is the example of starting with the customer need and want first, which is, I want the TV experience and the home entertainment experience I saw in the store when I get home.

And they weren't getting that, because they were leaving with the wrong solution.

And that impacted us financially with returns.

So the group of us -- the team got together from the employees in the store to everyone here, right up to the marketing group to say how do we change what our offer is, which is the HD Advantage program and how do we bring that to the market and tell people about it, which was the HD Done Right campaign.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was Sean and Mike Vitelli.

And that ends our Q&A session.

Thanks to our audience for participating in our fourth quarter earnings conference call.

As a reminder, a replay will be available by dialing in the U.S.

800-405-2236 and entering the personal identification number of 11086190 or internationally 303-590-3000 and entering the personal identification number of 11086190.

The replay will be available from about 12:00 p.m.

Eastern time today until 1:00 a.m.

Eastern time next Thursday April 12.

You can also hear the replay on www.bestbuy.com by clicking on our "for our investors".

If you have additional questions, please call Jennifer Driscoll at 612-291-6110; Charles Marentette at 612-291-6184; or me, Carla Haugen, at 612-291-6146.

Reporters on the other hand should contact Sue Busch, Director of Corporate Public Relations at 612-291-6114.

Thanks and that concludes our call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude Best Buy's conference call for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007.

You may now disconnect and we thank you for using AT&T teleconferencing.