百思買 (BBY) 2008 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.

Welcome to Best Buy's conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 2008.

At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode.

Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) As a reminder, this call is being recorded for playback and will be available by 11:00 AM eastern time today.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS)

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

Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, Eric.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for participating in our fiscal first quarter conference call.

We have four speakers for you today.

First up, Brad Anderson, our CEO, will give you his perspective on the quarter and how we interpret it.

Then Darren Jackson, Executive Vice President Finance and CFO, will take you through the financial overview, including the quarter and our annual guidance.

Third is Bob Willett, CEO of International and CIO, participating by phone from China.

Bob will briefly characterize our results outside the United States, where our top line growth really stood out.

Last, Brian Dunn will take a deeper look at the customer and employee data, which give us confidence in our overall strategy.

As usual, we have a broad management group here with me to answer your questions following our formal remarks.

We'd like to request that callers limit themselves to a single, one-part question so that we can include more people in our Q&A session, consistent with our approach on prior calls, we will move to the end of the queue those who asked a question on last quarter's call.

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

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

As usual the media are participating in this call in a listen-only mode.

Also, the call is available for replay in case you missed a portion of the call.

Let me give you the replay instructions.

Simply dial 800-405-2236 and then enter the personal identification number 11091337.

International callers use the same PIN, but dial us at 303-590-3000.

The replay will be available from approximately 1:00 PM central time today until midnight on Tuesday, June 26.

With that I'll turn the call over to Brad Anderson, Vice Chairman and CEO, who will begin our prepared remarks.

Brad?

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us on our quarterly conference call.

We're proud of our track record of earnings growth over the last 10 years, so missing as we've done in this quarter is not taken lightly by this organization.

In the past, when we've missed earnings in a quarter, we've expressed a clear point of view to our employees, our shareholders, describing a plan of action in response.

The quarters in which we have missed earnings have come in one of two scenarios, and most of them fit into scenario one.

Scenario one is, we missed the quarter because we believe we made poor strategic choices, or our initiatives didn't deliver the expected outcome and/or we overspent in the quarter.

In this case, we usually decide to change the strategy or revamp the initiatives to deliver a better outcome.

It's a simple message to land and it's easy for analysts to tell whether making -- we're making progress.

Moreover, we've had a solid track record of making the necessary changes.

That's our scenario one.

Scenario two is far rarer.

It's as follows.

We missed the quarter, but we believe our strategy is actually consistent with the long-term results we want to drive.

This situation is tougher, because we see evidence our strategy is working in the marketplace.

And when we look at this last quarter, we're looking at market share gains, gains in customer loyalty, and our strong international sales results, all of which would normally correlate with good earnings outcomes in the quarter.

Also, the strategic choices we made in the first quarter, such as opening more stores early in the year and our international expansion are ones we would do again, even if we had 20/20 hindsight.

In other words, our financial results aren't consistent with our strategic results.

It's a much harder message to land, and it's more difficult for observers to tell whether we're right in our interpretation of the facts.

Historically, if we're correct about scenario two, it can be followed by strong financial results, and we saw that last year in the third quarter, though sometimes that takes longer.

Today, we see our situation as scenario two.

As we look at the quarter's performance, we see our earnings were below our expectations, yet our results appeared to be better than others in our space.

But that's only one number and we believe it's misleading and arguably dangerous to look at a single metric.

Over the years, we've observed that EPS doesn't always correlate with the core health of the business, and as we look at our business today, we see strong indicators that our overall strategy is indeed successful.

Brian Dunn will elaborate a moment on these indicators.

In addition, we will share with you the trends in our customer satisfaction indicates -- index, which points to real improvement with the customer experience and the employee experience.

At the same time, we are nowhere close to the end of our story on improving our business model and the customer experience.

So we're confident in our strategy and we are investing in the long-term success of the company.

We continue to grow both the number and value of our customer relationships through our new stores, our international growth, services, Best Buy Mobile, Private Label, Financial Service, and brand deployment -- and new brand deployment, to name just a few areas.

In fact, in several places we want to grow faster.

So that's my lens on the quarter.

And if I leave you with one point, it's this: we're never satisfied with missing earnings.

However, we know it does not reflect the core health of our business, the strength of our strategy, or our ability to execute through our people, or our optimism about the future.

In addition, we remain very focused on driving long-term success through building and strengthening our customer relationships.

With that, I would like to turn it over to Darren for a financial overview.

Thank you, Brad, and very clear.

Good morning, everyone.

We're certainly off to a different start this year than we were in the last two years when we grew earnings 38% and 85%, respectively.

The financial results in the first quarter were clearly below our expectations, as a soft retail environment coupled with a significant mix change in our business reduced earnings.

Today I plan to highlight the performance drivers in the quarter, update you on our capital structure progress and discuss our outlook for the remainder of the year.

First, total revenue of $7.9 billion was generally in line with our expectations.

However, more of the revenue growth was driven by our international business than we had planned.

Canada delivered strong comparable store sales with a gain of 12.8%.

Five Star and Best Buy China also delivered better than expected top line growth.

Our international revenue results stood out against our domestic comparable store sales growth, which was 1.7%.

Our U.S.

quarterly comp was lower than we had anticipated, given our strong fourth quarter performance of a 5% comparable store sales gain in the U.S.

Growth in the television industry slowed dramatically in the quarter due to softer consumer demand in the aftermath of strong Super Bowl sales.

We think that some consumers may have opted to make purchases in the fourth quarter leading to a subsequent industry pause.

While sales gains were modest in the first quarter, we are very pleased with our growing TV market share and the fact that the overall household penetration rate for flat panel TV is no more than 20%.

We still have millions of customers to delight with our full, flat HD experience.

The gaming business, while growing rapidly, was also slower than anticipated this quarter, as pricing and availability hampered the takeup of new gaming platforms.

Sales of notebook computers continued to be very strong, fueled by consumers' interest in Vista.

More importantly, we firmly believe that the differentiator which is our blue shirt associates and our Geek Squad agents enabled our strong growth in this category.

Our online business continued its strong 20% plus comparable store sales growth in the quarter.

Now, the story for the quarter is the gross profit rate, which declined 150 basis points this year.

The composition of the revenue was the primary driver.

The decline can be put into three buckets.

First, which was expected, the inclusion of our international business at a significantly lower gross margin rate accounted for 60 basis points of the decline.

We have one more quarter to go before we fully anniversary China in our margin structure.

The second bucket is the mix of business in Best Buy U.S., where the sale skewed more heavily toward lower margin categories, specifically gaming hardware and notebook computers grew in the mix year over year, both of which are headwinds on the rate.

Collectively, mix accounted for about half or 45 basis points for the domestic gross profit rate decline.

To be honest, we expect this trend of mix to continue through the back-to-school shopping season.

Finally, rate issues accounted for the balance of the U.S.

gross profit rate decline.

This was primarily related to television product transitions, the promotional environment plus lower profitability of computing transactions.

We believe we navigated the TV transition very well and feel very comfortable with our inventory levels.

Now on to SG&A.

Our company-wide SG&A rate was flat year over year after getting 110 basis points of leverage in the first quarter of last year.

First, our international business provided 40 basis points of leverage, which is due to the operating structure in China and the strong revenue growth in Canada.

On the other hand, our SG&A rate rose 40 basis points domestically.

The increase in the U.S.

expense rate was driven by several factors.

First, lower revenue gains make it difficult to obtain SG&A leverage.

Second, investments and initiatives to support customers, such as store operating model, call centers, and service facilities were higher than they were in last year's first quarter.

We are feeling the rollover effect of the prior investments we made in the form of capital and labor models in home theater which are geared to higher volume levels.

Additionally, the number of new stores in operation during the first quarter was more than it had been historically.

We opened 30 stores compared with 11 last year in the first quarter.

Finally, we concluded certain legal issues, which added expense in the quarter versus last year.

These increases were partially offset by the restructuring and severance costs of $26 million or $0.03 a share last year.

When it was all said and done, our level of spending was essentially in-line with our plan and wasn't the driver of the shortfall in the quarter.

Net, it all adds up to roughly 150 basis point decline in operating income rate.

All in all, while we feel like we performed very well where the consumer was ready to buy, we had expected a better profit picture in the quarter.

What you don't see in the first quarter financial results is that we continue improving key customer metrics and market share in a difficult environment.

Those trends give us our confidence in our business strategy.

Brian will discuss this in a minute.

We are growing our market share and improving our customer satisfaction scores.

In short, we are executing on our strategy.

These are the things that are in our control and we are pleased with how the customer is responding.

In addition, we feel that the changing retail landscape offers us further opportunities for growth.

No doubt that there will be fewer retail store fronts in the home office and consumer electronic space as we enter the second half of the year.

We believe our even stronger position with customers will pay dividends as we look out over the balance of the year and beyond.

Next, I want to pick up where we last left off regarding our capital allocation.

As you recall, we told you that we have an opportunity to ratchet up investments in our core business through more stores, acquisitions, and share buybacks.

We've made good progress on all three fronts in the first quarter.

For example, we opened 34 new stores globally and remain on track to open a record 135 stores this year.

Additionally, our 20,000 square foot stores' productivity jumped 10% to $825 of annual sales per foot.

These type of results coupled with changes in the competitive landscape provide us with increased opportunity for new store growth.

As we look -- we look forward to updating you on this relatively soon.

Second, we completed the acquisition of Speakeasy for approximately $100 million that allows us to build our capabilities for serving small businesses.

And third, we increased the share repurchases to $412 million in the quarter, nearly double last year's pace.

We anticipate continuing to demonstrate strong repurchase behavior compared to prior-year levels over the balance of the year.

That brings me to my final point, which is our outlook for the year.

It is still early in the year, but we do see evidence to suggest that the consumer spending will be more difficult to read, particularly down to the product level.

The current environment indicates more potential variability in consumer spending, leading us to see a wider range of outcomes for the year.

We remain confident that flat panel TVs, notebook computers, and gaming will remain very appealing to our customers.

As we look forward to the remainder of the year, we see relief in the gross profit rate as we lap the intense promotional environment of the third and fourth quarters of last year, and as we work to increase the profitability of each transaction.

In addition, we are taking actions to both edit our expenses while investing to fuel growth and efficiency to meet our customers' expectations.

We continue to believe that our earnings growth for the year will come in the back half of the year.

The first half will be tougher based on the industry trends and our first quarter results.

Therefore, we are moderating our profit expectations for the year.

Revenue is expected to be in line with our original plan of $39 billion.

We now expect our operating income rate to improve nominally versus the 30 basis points of improvement that we originally expected.

We expect the gross profit rate to have more pressure than we first told you because of mix.

We believe that we can still generate significant SG&A leverage on the year, slightly better than our original guidance.

Most important, we are confident in our strategy and plan to stay the course, investing for the future.

Based on everything that we can currently see, we anticipate diluted earnings per share of $2.95 to $3.15 for the year.

This change in the earnings range is not indicative of our longer term fortunes, rather it is a prudent assessment of what the business is likely to produce in the current spending environment.

I'd like to reiterate that we see positive momentum in our key customer data and in our competitive position.

We believe we have all the right elements in place to capitalize in a choppy environment and accelerate when there is momentum change with the consumer.

With that, I want to turn it over to Bob to talk about our international growth and performance in the quarter.

Thank you, Darren.

And good morning to everybody.

Our international results exceeded our expectations across the board.

We would be remiss if we didn't take a moment to thank the employees who drove this performance.

In Canada, both of our brands reported a double-digit comparable store sales gain for the first quarter, or 12.8% in aggregate.

That's on top of a comparable store sales gain of 7.1% in the prior year's first quarter.

We believe we are starting to reap the benefits of more distinct separation of our two brands.

We saw particular strength in notebook computers and gaming.

Moreover, we didn't have to be aggressive on price to garner these results.

In fact, our gross profit rate in Canada rose modestly for the quarter.

In addition, we achieved significant improvement in our SG&A rate in Canada, on top of material gains in the prior year's period.

The expense rate improvement reflected revenue gains, leverage of fixed costs, and more effective advertising.

We said on a prior conference call that the story in Canada has two chapters.

One was about establishing the footprint, and the other two -- or chapter two is about improving the operating model, which has now begun.

Our customer centricity strategy in Canada is modeled on our approach from the States, using the same customer lens for looking at our business.

As a result, good things are starting to happen.

I would like to publicly thank all of our Canadian employees in both Future Shop and Best Buy, as well as their families for yet another strong quarter.

We're also making good progress in China.

Our first Best Buy store in China is projected to finish the year with revenue that ranks it amongst our top stores globally.

That's a pretty good start for a first-year of business.

Our Five Star stores are above plan in revenue.

We've seen some pressure on the gross profit rate, yet strong growth in the top line and in gross profit dollars.

Unlike our competitors, we are not putting all our focus on adding real estate.

Rather, we are focusing on growing both comparable store sales and operating profits at our Five Star stores through the lens of customer centricity.

We're also having some initial success in evolving the margin structure.

Secondarily, we continue to pursue a realistic number of new store openings as a part of a controlled growth strategy, which is intentionally measured.

We believe that this pace of growth is prudent, disciplined, and sustainable.

Moreover, we remain confident that we can boost the profitability of this business over time as we are doing in Canada.

Altogether, our international segment's operating income declined modestly for the quarter, due entirely to the investment we are making.

Strong revenue results and expenses improvements in Canada were offset by infrastructure investments in China, the buildout of our international support team, start-up infrastructure costs associated with launching Geek Squad in London, and preparations for greenfielding stores in Mexico and Turkey, as previously discussed.

In periods such as this, we see the benefits of an international expansion more clearly.

As our international business grows over time, it will help diversify Best Buy's revenue streams.

Soft results in one country may be offset by strong results in another.

In addition, we can share best practices on a global basage -- basis, which over time will accelerate our goal of using our network of assets to solve more customer problems.

To enable our success on a global basis and in the U.S., we will continue to invest in our supply chain and IT infrastructure.

These investments can be leveraged in any country we enter.

This year, three of the major initiatives we are starting to implement are: active space management, clearance price optimization, and the continued rollout of collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment, or CPFR, as it's commonly known.

All three are separately aimed at improving both the customer experience and the bottom line.

We'll keep you informed of the progress of these as we move forward.

With that, I would like to hand you over to my friend and colleague, Brian Dunn, who will wrap up our formal remarks.

Thanks, Bob.

While we're obviously disappointed with our financial results for this quarter, I'd like to take just a few minutes to paint a larger, deeper picture for you.

It's a picture colored by an optimism grounded in reality and an unshakable confidence in our future.

For many people, the consumer electronics industry is the industry most closely associated with how human beings live their lives now and in the future.

The solutions we provide are right at the center of how people work, play, and live.

As a result, the industry has grown steadily and sometimes dramatically for years.

In fact, going back to spring of 2001, the industry has seen positive growth every single quarter until the first quarter of this fiscal year.

Does this mean that people are changing their minds, turning away from technology and entertainment products and solutions?

We don't think so.

They simply hit the pause button.

We believe it's a timing issue, natural ebbs and flows of different aspects of our industry.

Moreover, in the fourth quarter of last year, we may have fast forwarded some of the business with terrific promotions.

But to be honest, we believe that we -- that what we're seeing also has a lot to do with macroeconomics factors like: housing, interest rates, no relief at the price of gas and the many other factors that give our customers cause for real concern right now.

It's a humbling reminder that no matter how tight a ship you run and no matter how confident you are of the course you're sailing, external conditions completely outside your control can still rock your boat.

And yet despite what we believe to be the first industry-wide interruption in six years, we have never been more optimistic about our future growth opportunities.

We're very excited about the investments we're making.

For example, in Financial Services and Best Buy Mobile, and we continue to move full speed ahead to provide the services our customers need to make all the stuff we sell work together and make their lives richer.

And most important of all, we see signs that we're making great strides regarding the two people whose relationship matters most, our customer and our employee.

We believe that when times are tough, great companies get sharper, better, and closer to their customers.

To be blunt, when the market is soft, that's when great companies, that's when leaders, win market share to be in a better position when things pick back up.

And that's what we did in the first quarter.

Our overall share of the market increased by 150 basis points.

And that increase is more than twice the rate of our closest competitor.

We gained share in many areas across the store, particularly in computing, home theater, mobile audio, and imaging.

Our market share is at an all-time high, all at a time where the market itself has never been more competitive.

Even more encouraging is the fact that the Best Buy brand is especially strong with our best customers.

Our customer satisfaction scores are also at an all-time high and our number of Reward Zone members, that's our customer loyalty program, recently topped 20 million.

Reward Zone members are especially important to Best Buy, because they demonstrate a willingness to engage in a relationship with us, which allows us to serve them better.

They're more loyal to our brand and they're 2.5 times more profitable than our other customers.

Plus, it's early and we're just beginning to identify how to serve our Reward Zone customers and to further evolve our relationship with them.

I offer these pieces of information not to distract you or sugar coat soft financial news this quarter, but instead to provide a lens for a longer-term view.

And when you look through this lens, I believe you see evidence of an amazing performance in an extremely challenging environment.

And this performance is a direct testament to our people.

We know that our success and our future depend on one thing, our ability to connect with customers, to form real relationships with them however they choose to interact with the Best Buy brand.

Our ability to make good on that strategy depends entirely on our people, their commitment to the strategy and their commitment to Best Buy.

And we have some extremely encouraging news on that front as well.

Our U.S.

retail turnover, which was about 100% in fiscal 2001, has now fallen to 67%.

Even more encouraging, our retail management turnover is now approximately 20%.

We're proud of this progress with the people in our company closest to the customer, the men and women who are the Best Buy brand and I would like to thank them for their dedication, especially now in the midst of a tough environment.

We're never happy when we fail to meet the financial targets we set for ourselves.

I believe this management team works for and represents three people: the customer, the employee, and the shareholder.

And during the first 90 days of this fiscal year, there's no doubt that our performance on behalf of the shareholder was disappointing.

But because of the work on our employees on behalf of our customers, we believe the next several years hold the promise of great things to come for everyone in the Best Buy family.

And with that we'll hope it up for questions.

Thank you, sir.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) Our first question is from David Schick with Stifel Nicolaus.

Please go ahead.

Hello, was that me?

Yes.

Good morning, David.

I couldn't tell.

Thanks.

Good morning.

I guess the question is on May 2nd, when your K was out, you said the -- obviously, the front half of the year would be somewhat lower in operating margin and it came in worse, and it's six weeks later.

Can you talk -- can you kind of isolate May and how that worked and if that was the factor that was worse, what gives you the confidence if that was indeed the shape of the quarter from a profitability standpoint?

Yes.

Hi, David, it's Darren.

One thing I can confirm is we're not clairvoyant.

That's what that proves in one sense.

But I'd say, here's the way to think about it is that part of the reason we went to annual guidance, and if I use last year's results as an example, I think we started the year with a view that margins would be flat to down 10 basis points and maybe 30 basis points of SG&A.

And maybe we'd finish in a range of 265 to 280.

So I think when the year played out, that's exactly what occurred, except it happened very differently.

Our margins were much different in terms of what we thought.

They were down over 50 basis points, and our SG&A improved by almost 100.

And so you would expect that every month we're looking at the results, but we're looking at them in the context of how do we see the balance of the year playing out and what actions will we take if the results are a little different than what we see in order to shore up the overall annual guidance for the business.

I'll tell you, we -- internally, we had a number of debates going back and forth because it's early.

It's early in the year, but I think where we settled out on is that we just have some evidence and some trends and some variability and volatility that our best judgment was to change the range at this point in time.

And within the context of just looking back six weeks ago, I think it would be imprudent and just misleading to say the business fell off the cliff in the last six weeks, because it hasn't.

I mean, what we've been doing, practically is looking out over the balance of the year and asking ourselves, given what we've learned, what adjustments do we need to make in order to make sure, one, we remain on track strategically in terms of where we're going, as Brian talked about, and two, where can we make the edits where we need to make the edits in terms of SG&A while protecting and investing in things that we know as adding to the long-term value of our enterprise.

Okay.

So to sort of sum it up or reiterate, you're -- in May, as you said that in early May, it wasn't a different equation as you thought about the year than it is today, it was just where you said it at that point.

So it is not May that is causing the change.

No, it's not.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from with Evan Rothschild with The Boston Company.

Please go ahead.

Yes, hi.

Thanks for the question.

I was wondering if you could explain if it was the change in mix in the last six weeks or around Memorial Day, that was the issue on margin, or was -- was mix an issue throughout the quarter?

Well, mix was an issue throughout the quarter.

As Darren was just alluding to, we were trying to figure out -- when you are looking at something that's happening for a few weeks, what does it tell you about what's the sustaining trend?

Because if you go back to the finish of the fourth quarter, or the previous year, we were seeing very different messages in terms of what was happening with the business.

So it started to change at the beginning of the fiscal year, and that's historically often times has changed very rapidly.

So you might see a month in which you see a shift in change.

What became clear as we went through the quarter is that this shift was not going to dissipate, it wasn't going to change.

And that's really what changed our guidance and changed the look we had at the balance of the year.

Because if the trend was just a blip, which we've seen often, then we were looking at a different set of data.

And this told us that this was much more sustaining than we thought it was initially.

That's why we haven't changed our revenue guidance.

Our revenue guidance absolutely hasn't changed in terms of where we're going as a company, but what's changed is the content of where we think the revenue gains are going to come.

I think it follows that we are following the customer today, and so what you should have heard from us on the call is we've got a little work to do in terms of figuring out given this change in mix, just as we've done historically, what do we have to do to support those transactions that work for the customer that will change the profit picture going forward?

I see.

And you also had talked in the past about how Geek and software sales were going to sort of mitigate some of the gross profit falling off.

Has that not picked up how you had expected?

Well, I think one of the things you look at here, and I think it will be apparent in relationship to some of what you see in the industry number is that those are exactly the things which give us a strong revenue number in the quarter.

That even in a time in which the industry shrunk a bit, we've been able to grow in other areas because of the competitive strength of our overall offering, which very much is impacted by what's differentiated about it, Geek being a big part of that.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

And that was Brad and Darren Jackson.

Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Bill Sims with Citigroup.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, good morning.

Good morning.

As the industry transitions from 720p technology to 1080p technology, have you seen, one, any evidence of manufacturers trying to stuff the channel during the transition?

And, two, is the marketing of 1080p technology choking off demand for 720p technology in the near term?

Thank you.

Mike Vitelli will answer that.

In the two-part question, the first part is no.

We haven't seen any evidence of manufacturers dumping 720p, the -- both technologies have a place.

There's a technology difference and a price point difference.

A lot of the entry level LCD products and plasma products are 720p, and then there are appropriate steps that satisfy different customer needs as you move through it.

We were pleased that we were able to move through our transitional inventory at the beginning of the year as the manufacturers were changing relatively quickly, much quicker than we did last year where it took us close to six months, given how manufacturers came in at different points and time.

And we were able to do that in less than three.

So, we felt we were in a great position now that we have the latest and greatest technology on our floor to offer our customers.

Mike, I wonder if we should explain the underpinning of what I think the question is about sort of how manufacturers come into market with 720 and 1080p for the benefit of the rest of the callers.

So 720p,1080p, really just two different flavors of high definition television.

Both of them are outstanding.

What most manufacturers are doing and what we tell our customers as well, if you're looking at this as a long-term investment 1080p, which is more expensive today, is certainly something that's going to protect you in future (inaudible) as you go forward.

A lot of manufacturers are trying to mix to that level and there are certain manufacturers that are focusing almost exclusively on the lower end of 720p.

We have a very good balance in our store and our assortment between the different sizes.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Thank you, Mike and Brad.

Next question, please?

Our next question comes from Steve Kernkraut, Berman Capital.

Please go ahead.

Yes.

Hi, guys.

I wanted to get some better clarification.

So you had a 3% comp store sales gain and had no SG&A leverage this quarter, but yet you're assuming you're going to have SG&A leverage the rest of the year with a 3% to 5% comp?

Is that because of the China influence?

Or what's going to give you leverage in the back half of the year that you couldn't get in the first quarter?

Yes, Steve.

That's absolutely -- just context is that if you've been listening to our calls historically, we've said 3% is our break-even in terms of SG&A leverage.

As we look to the balance of the year, implicit in our comments, particularly Q3 and Q4, we certainly see a pickup in the comps coming in Q3 and Q4.

Let's say that there are four primary drivers as we look out to the balance of the year in terms of SG&A leverage.

One, we see continued leverage of our head -- if I broke it into buckets, a third of that leverage is going to come here in the headquarters, in part because of actions we took last year in terms of making adjustments to our overall infrastructure and headcount here in the headquarters.

Two, we continue to see benefits in places where we've done some outsourcing that we've talked about before in terms of some leverage in IT and now in GNFR as we look to the back half of the year.

And we've continued to adjust areas, and we've talked about this as we learn more about advertising and where we're placing some of those advertising bets in terms of the back half of the year.

And I'd say just overall, we continue to make the refinements to our store operating model as an organization, and those buckets collectively are where we see some of the larger SG&A leverage points in the back half of the year.

And maybe one last thing might be more timing where we loaded in the first quarter of this year more stores, historically, that have landed in our third quarter, we should ride that increased opening schedule into more SG&A leverage in the back half of the year as well.

Just because you swallowed it earlier.

We did.

But the other thing, just to be a little clearer in terms of one of the things, the labor expense in the store, is you're looking for trends that happen by product because you try to marry what's going on with the labor.

So when we saw the turndown in television sales, it's -- there's a delay between when you see that and when you realize it's a sustaining trend and adjust your expense.

So we're -- we have a different picture of what we'll see in terms of television, and we'll be -- that's more conservative than what we started with.

Okay.

And when you talk about an expanded product assortment benefiting you in the back half of the year, what kind of products do you really see benefiting you in the back half of the year?

Yes -- I can take that one.

I think there's a number of changes we have coming up, but the most significant one would be the expansion of our Apple stores within a store that you will see rolling out across the country over the next several months.

We anticipate that we'll have just under 300 Apple store-within-a-store setups by the time we hit our holiday period.

We're also extremely enthusiastic about Best Buy Mobile and what we're learning there and the implications we think that has for our base stores, and you're going to continue to see us expand our assortment and go to places that matter to our customers.

Okay.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

And that was Darren Jackson, Dave Morrish, and Brian Dunn.

Next question, please.

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

Please go ahead.

Thank you very much.

I just was trying to get some clarification on the inventory side.

On a macro basis it was up just a little bit more than sales.

If you took out China and you kind of looked at it sort of on a U.S.

basis, can you break out the comp inventory relative to the comp store sales?

Okay.

Jim Muehlbauer, would you like to comment?

David, it's Jim Muehlbauer.

Yes.

On the U.S.

business, our inventory was essentially in line with our square footage growth in the quarter.

The mix of our inventory, though, obviously is changing.

We are skewing more into notebook computers and flat panel televisions, as you would expect.

But our overall inventory growth in the U.S.

was consistent with our square footage growth in the quarter.

Is there any part of it within the mix that is particular -- that might be a little high that we could see incremental discount in going forward?

At this point in the year, no.

Mike Vitelli spoke earlier about the great work the store teams and our retail teams did in transitioning through the product inventory in the Home Theater space.

And that's the only technology that we actually transitioned materially in the quarter.

So we feel very good about our positions at quarter end.

So the transition has occurred in TVs for the most part, or --?

Yes, that is correct.

Yes.

David.

As a matter of fact, our distressed inventory levels year-over-year are down 200 basis points [despite] all of our growth in terms of new stores in terms of absolute dollars, they're down 5%.

So that is a way to think about what is the content of our aged inventory.

So we feel good about what's sitting in inventory right now.

In a quarter we had to navigate a very large, one of the largest ever television transitions if not the largest we navigated.

What -- just -- I'm sorry to follow-up, the last followup, what was it that made this one so significant?

Is that shift to 1080p?

It was just the timing of the way the manufacturers all were trying to move through their SKUs and get the new SKUs into the market as soon as possible.

There are less factories where the products are coming from.

So when four manufacturers transition at relatively the same time, that's 80 SKUs that are moving all within several weeks.

That -- and we were able to do that effectively and get that done and behind us so that we're moving into the new product lines sooner than we did last year.

Alright.

Thank you very much.

Okay, and the answers were from Jim Muehlbauer, Darren Jackson, then Brian and Mike Vitelli.

Next question, please?

Our next question comes from [Eric Mace] with Basso Capital.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, Eric.

Hi, how are you guys?

Good.

Hi, Darren.

There's been obviously lots of discussions about capital allocations since the last call and you guys touched on it a little bit today, but could you update us within the confines of your guidance what kind of share count you're looking at and has that changed since you initially gave us guidance?

Yes, so, Eric, here's the frame, is that without historically, we've not given out our specific targets in share repurchase, but let me talk about behaviorally.

What you saw in the first quarter is nearly a double up of last year's paid.

We have about $800 million still left in our current authorization.

Historically, we revisit that authorization, generally -- last year, I'll use as an example, during our annual shareholders meeting.

And so what I don't want to get into is actually predicting and forecasting the future in terms of where that's going to come out, but what I would tell you is that -- just that it's the same story that we talked about at the end of Q4.

It's implicit in our -- [I'm sorry], it's explicit in our earnings release, explicit in our script that we see a behavior of more aggressive opportunistic share repurchases just being part of this year, and that is candidly helping in terms of bottom line EPS that we see for the balance of the year within what we can see in our current authorization.

Okay.

That's what I was kind of trying to figure out.

As you look at giving guidance ahead of a board meeting and the annual meeting, you guys might be in a tough spot of trying to have to base it on some kind of share count when -- I don't know whether you build something else in there or not and how much flux there is.

Well said.

Yes.

So the answer is maybe?

Watch the space, probably.

We'll see.

Yes.

I think the way to look at it is we're giving you our best view based on the facts in terms of what we can see right now.

If that changes, you would expect us, and our historical pattern of behavior has been, to update you when material things change.

Okay.

So nothing else built in.

Great, thanks.

Thank you Eric, Darren and Brad.

Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Michael Baker with Deutsche Bank.

Please go ahead.

Thanks, guys.

So, Darren, it sounded like you guys expect comps to get better from here.

Environment's still tough.

I'm wondering what specifically leads you to believe comps will get better?

Is it that you expect a pickup in 1080p, even though it's higher price point and it's a tough economy, or are there other factors or is it just the Apple store?

And then, I guess, related to that, how much did the product transition away from 7 -- 720p, how much did that help the comp this first quarter?

This is Brian.

I'll give a little framing and then I'll ask Dave and Mike to jump in and give a little detail underneath it.

Short and simple, we expect Home Theater to start to get materially better as the teams hit training camps and the pig skins start to fly in the fall.

That has been a historical pattern that we don't see changing here.

We are enormously pleased with how the customer is choosing through this Vista transition, how the customer is systemically selecting us and Best Buy for the differentiated experience it can provide.

So I think I'll ask Dave and Mike to comment on why we are optimistic about the back half.

Sure.

I'll start with the computing space.

And I think the biggest thing we're seeing is that as the engagement of our employees with our customers in terms of explaining the advantages of Vista.

You can look out in the press and you can see things whenever you introduce a new operating system.

Some people are going to see it as bad, some people are going to see it as good.

And really our job with our blue shirts and our Geek Squad is to explain to customers exactly all the great benefits of what they can get with the Vista operating system.

And I think this has led to some tremendous market share growth for us in the PC segment, but more importantly we're getting tremendous growth in all of the other associated categories, such as accessories and hard drives, networking, software, and other related categories as well, such as digital imaging.

Another category I want to touch on is also what's happening in the GPS area inside of our stores.

We're at a point with this industry where there's less than 10% penetration and it seems to be a new digital product that is just sparking the customers' imagination.

And as well, we're getting the associated accessory sales and also service sales that go along with that very unique category.

And it should spark some tremendous growth for us in the back half.

And the last thing I want to comment on is that we're seeing some tremendous strides in terms of growth with our Geek Squad services that are associated with our PCs.

The agents are doing an absolutely spectacular job.

They're assuring the customers in terms of the fact that we can guide them in terms of their purchases and what they need to complete the digital experience that they want to purchase from Best Buy.

So all in all I'm very confident about the back half in the PC category.

We're going to go to Mike in Home Theater and then we'll hear from Jill on games.

So just one point I wanted to make, Michael, we haven't completely transitioned out of 720p.

The industry and Best Buy has both flavors of high definition in our stores.

There's no question that we probably have one of the highest mixes of 1080p, because of our Magnolia Home Theater, which is -- that is pretty much what we keep in that section of the store for the high-end customer.

We're seeing a lot of -- we're still seeing a lot of customer satisfaction there, because that's where we're seeing almost a huge -- a tremendous percentage of our products get installed where we saw very, very high double-digit growth in our Home Theater installation.

And we see that continuing.

I think Brian's point about the football season is not lost on anyone.

That is a big part of what goes on in television.

It's one of the biggest parts of the year.

January, which was right before the Super Bowl, was one of the largest television months ever, if not the largest, and that indeed caused a little bit of a hiatus over the last couple months.

So we're growing, we're growing faster than the industry.

And the issue is we weren't growing as fast as we thought we were going to be in that little period of time.

But we think that's going to come back.

The other one I wanted to mention also is appliances.

The appliance industry is having an incredible -- incredibly tough time.

It's down a lot, in double digits, and we're actually growing in that space.

And there's going to be continuing shifts of appliance market share in the hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe close to $1 billion, changing hands between players in the industry.

And we think the foundation that we've put in with our employees with our eight specialized people in that department are thrilling customers, because there isn't an experience that customers really like in the appliance industry.

We think we actually have something there.

Okay, thanks.

That's helpful.

One more follow-up.

What is pricing like in TVs right now?

Are you seeing margins firm there at all?

Pricing actually has been great.

If you look at it year-over-year first quarter to second quarter, you see the traditional down 25% versus the first quarter of last year, but frankly that all happened in the fourth quarter.

If you look at our first quarter versus the fourth quarter, pricing -- cost per inch and pricing is virtually flat, which has been very good to see.

Thanks, appreciate it.

I'm actually am going to jump in and add on to the answer and sort of add on to the question.

I wanted Jill to give us a little bit of context on gaming, which I think is important for people on the call.

Alright.

We see really four areas for the back half from a gaming perspective that will really drive hardware.

Number one will be increased availability on some of the allocated systems, be it DS Lite or Wii.

And that will be drivers for hardware as well as accessories, some of the new accessories that are going to be coming out in some of the mega software releases.

These will drive hardware and they also will show the capabilities of some of the platforms and also broaden the audience for gaming.

And it really plays to the strength of Best Buy in terms of our ability to customize gaming solutions to our customers' unique needs in terms of what is a gaming experience that they would like.

So we think these four factors will add to the strength of the back half.

Thank you, that was Jill Hamburger, Vice President.

Our next question comes from Vivian Ma with CIBC.

Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Just a couple -- good morning, hi.

Just a couple of questions.

You mentioned that in the third quarter, right, you were going to be lapping the China acquisition and that should alleviate some of the pressures on the gross margin.

I'm just wondering about the gross margin trends within China itself.

Has it -- has it been stable, has it been declining, and what are some of the factors there?

Bob, are you still on the call?

Yes, I am.

Okay, we'll have Bob answer that one first.

We're seeing, first of all, an improvement in the operating model.

I do want to point out, though, that it's definitively slow, because you're moving from a situation where the vendor controls are starved for space and basically the retailer is a landlord.

And in our Best Buy store in Shanghai, we've changed that model completely.

But in Five Star, we're doing it very slowly.

And we're also adding our product ranges from our global sourcing office in China.

So we're starting to see improvements.

In fact, the whole purpose of being here for the next few days is to actually look at what we're doing around that area.

But it's pretty stable, it's pretty steady, but it is moving and it's moving in the right direction.

But we're now at a point where we do have to make some fundamental changes in the operating model.

And I have one more follow-up question.

For the TV business, I've been hearing about the coming availability of wireless TVs, and I'm just wondering what is your outlook on that, and how does it affect your business given you have rather large installation crew and how -- presumably the more TVs go wireless, the less there would be a need for installation?

We'll have Mike Vitelli answer that one.

Wireless technology is something that's been talked about in a lot of different areas for a very long period of time.

The ability to move the bandwidth of high definition via wireless, it -- it's certainly something that's being demonstrated in the kind of science lab level at this point.

So that we can prove that it's doable over time, but even today the houses that have high-speed broadband that actually couldn't move high definition TV at all.

Before we get to the point that we're in a space where you're actually moving high definition wirelessly, we've got quite a ways to go.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Vivian and Mike.

Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Colin McGranahan with Sanford Bernstein.

Please go ahead.

Good morning.

You mentioned as one of the gross margin pressures, the lower profitability of PC transactions.

I was hoping you could expand on that a little bit and just talk about with you mean there.

And then as an addition, in the 10K for the first time, you did disclose warranties.

Is that part of the issue, that warranties are falling?

Is that in the PC category alone, or also you're seeing a lower attach or lower volume -- or price of warranties in the TV category as well?

We'll start with Dave Morrish and then Jim Muehlbauer.

I'll start off with the -- the margins that were experienced in the PC industry are not any lower than where they have been over the last period of time.

As Darren discussed, it's more of a mix rate issue, and on top of that I think the biggest thing that we're experiencing is significant growth in terms of the other categories that people buy associated with those particular products.

So we're expecting, as we go through the year, some upside, because our customers are becoming excited about the opportunity of interacting with our Geek Squad agents and really understanding what they can provide from a service perspective, so we can offer the complete experience to the customer.

So I guess the biggest answer to all of that is that I consider our performance in the PC area actually very, very good and something that we can look forward to in the future, but as Darren and Jim indicated, it's just a mix rate perspective in terms of where we sit overall.

I'm not sure I understand that.

So you said in the release, lower profitability of computer transactions.

So you're selling within the PC category, you're mixing negatively?

Yes, compared -- Colin, it's Jim Muehlbauer.

Versus last year, the overall profitability of the PC transaction, the basket, is lower than last year, and we're excluding the Geek Squad experience from that.

So I think that's the point Dave was mentioning, is that when you bundle the Geek Squad attached to the PC transaction, we are making progress.

Probably more importantly in our business model as we look forward given the continued interest in the notebook space with Vista, we're even discovering more opportunities to meet customer needs by attaching better solutions.

And it's actually part of it -- and you brought the question up around the warranty business.

It's actually using that vehicle to meet customer needs in a way that we haven't reinvented in a number of years.

So, clearly with the advent of Geek Squad, it provides us the opportunity to provide a level of service that's different.

We've got to find a better way going forward to make that experience work for the consumer in conjunction with the warranty we offer on that package.

Okay.

So when you add in Geek Squad on a year-over-year basis, it could be a more profitable transaction, but excluding Geek Squad it's less profitable than it was a year ago?

And the main driver of that lower profitability excluding Geek Squad is less warranty attach?

Is that correct?

It's slightly less profitable than a year ago, and as Dave said, it's more of a mix issue, desktops and notebooks, this year versus last year.

Okay.

Okay.

Colin, you shouldn't overblow that.

That's a de minimis part of the change.

So I don't want you to run away thinking, boy, that's half of the issue.

It's de minimis in relation.

And when you add in Geek, it actually goes the other way.

Okay.

Thanks, Darren.

And I was just curious, you did mention Geek as an offset in the release.

Could you expand on it at all and just tell us what Geek did in terms of the positive uptick in gross margins?

Yes, I would say, this is Sean Skelley, I would say, first and foremost, we were very focused on making Vista the best transition we could make it and we were -- we saw very positive, very limited returns and exchange issues.

And although we did see a blip on the -- when it did get released in customer satisfaction, we were able to regain the customer satisfaction that we had before Vista, which was our main focus.

And candidly, we received a high percentage of calls with customer questions which we took, answered and supported those customers.

We saw solid double-digit growth in Geek and we saw triple-digit growth in Home Theater install.

So we see both of our service infrastructures actually supporting our business growth, and I would say that it's been a comparable opportunity for us to actually change our expectations around inventories.

So when Mike Vitelli was talking about our smooth transition relatively through Home Theater, a big part of that was because when we install, we see 25% to 35% less returns and exchanges, and Geek Squad rates are about 40% less returns and exchanges when an agent is involved with the transaction.

So Darren, by my math, solid double-digit growth in Geek, so it translates to maybe as much as 30 basis points of offset to gross margin.

Does that sound realistic?

Yes, Colin, that would be high.

We've talked about it being an impact for the year that is favorable.

We met our expectations in Q1 given the mix of that business, but that estimate would be high.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

That was Dave, Jim, and Sean Skelly, Senior VP of Services.

And now we're going to take our last question, given that it's been one hour.

Our final question comes from Chris Horvers with Bear, Stearns.

Please go ahead.

Good morning.

I made it to the finish line.

Congratulations.

I was a little worried there.

And since I'm last, a couple quick follow-ups here.

First on Colin's question, on the services side, I think a key piece to the Best Buy story is the customer centric service model.

I think looking at the profit contribution, can you talk about qualitatively where we are in the profit cycle of the Geek and the Magnolia install business and when we might see more callout as to -- or improved profit contribution?

Sure.

Well, I'll say where we're at in the traction, Jim, if you want to help me on any of the financial points that I can or cannot say.

I would say on the transition, clearly from Home Theater, we actually just built that competency, so last year at this time we were building it in respect for the growth we had in Home Theater.

So we're just about ready to lap that from an anniversary standpoint.

We did get operating profit faster from that business than we thought.

And we're continually in a positive operating profit in that business.

And again, triple-digit growth over top of last year's triple-digit growth.

On Geek Squad, as I think we told you last year, we also put a big infrastructure in place, which was Geek Squad City, that's serving about 3,000 PCs a day.

That was an infrastructure spend.

So that was to support our customers and expense for it.

And we don't anniversary that until about September of this year.

So that is a material -- that is an impact essentially on the Geek Squad business.

We are seeing strong double-digit growth and our agent count is roughly 10,000.

So we're seeing that mainly in productivity naturally year-over-year.

And I think to your point, the complexity of our story is it's helping our returns and exchanges, it's clearly strongly helping our customer sat, where we're seeing strong CSI scores, particularly in Home Theater and in computing.

And we believe we have a brand that is going to highly differentiate us as the integration of these products continue to grow and challenge the consumer for getting the best expectations they can from the product service.

And then lastly, when the leading consumer magazine rates you as the best service provider, I think you can't ask for better publicity.

And we candidly are making sure that we can continue to live up to that expectation.

So is it fair to say that on the Geek side that the spending up until you get there in September anniversarying Geek City, you're still spending more money year-over-year and any qualitative comments on how much of a ramp on profitability it is as we lap through on both the Magnolia and Geek?

Yes, so here's the frame I would give you is that -- so the spending is going to continue, but I think it would be misleading to say, and then it stops.

It's because I think part of your future in terms of how Best Buy is going to differentiate and win in the marketplace is ultimately we've got to touch the customer where they live.

So we've got to solve problems in their home.

I think this has been a journey for us that last year took the form of a technical asset called Geek Squad City.

In terms of other investments we need to make in order to continue that migration in terms of the relationship with our customer.

I think you -- we're going to be on the call next time, the next time, the next time, the next time, talking about how we're driving this balance to build this organization that at the heart of it is connected to relationship and in that relationship is this service experience.

And so it -- we would be -- I think about it as a four-quarter game in terms of where we're going.

I can't see the second quarter now.

We're just building the trust and making this crap work right now.

And candidly, the consumer wants their life better, and the fact that we're making it work is going to get them to access us to make their life better.

So we're talking about wireless TVs, I can't wait.

That's where the opportunities really come for us to help that consumer where they want it, which is clearly going to be their car, in their businesses, and in their homes.

But there is also a core underlying point of understanding the environment in Best Buy.

And part of the reason we see we're in an opportunity-rich environment is the amount of change we're swallowing on any given period of time is increasing.

Moore's Law has gone from 18 months to 10 months.

That means what's coming into our consumer marketplace in terms of capacity is staggering increases in capability and we -- along with that staggering increase in capability comes staggering increases in confusion.

And what we're doing with our combination of our capability in store, our international capability and our service capability, is solving for that.

But it won't be linear, because the change doesn't come into the consumer at a linear pace.

So some of -- if we're learning -- you mentioned that our customer sat rates deteriorated with the launch of Vista and we had to recover from that.

Those are the kind of learning experiences that we're going to constantly be ingesting and they don't look like a linear transition for the future.

The other thing to say, this is Bob, the -- Sean paid for scheduling, routing, dispatch and Geek City, but actually Magnolia will benefit from it and multiple other businesses that we're developing will benefit from it as will Canada, etc.

So unfortunately the first part of the business that requires something funds it, but afterwards, we know that this is going to go across the sort of two, three other key platforms of growth that we're developing that will, if you like, really maximize this investment.

Thank you to Sean, Darren, Brad, and from China, Bob, for answering that final question, and thank you to our audience for participating in our first quarter earnings conference call.

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

1-800-405-2236, or internationally 303-590-3000 and entering the pin number 11091337.

The replay will be available from 12:00 PM eastern time today until 1:00 AM eastern time next Tuesday, June 26th.

And as always, you can hear the replay on www.bestbuy.com.

Just click on for our investors.

For additional questions, please call Jennifer Driscoll, Carla Haugen, or me, Charles Marentette.

Reporters, you can contact Sue Busch, Director of Corporate Public Relations.

With that, I would like to conclude the call.

Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude Best Buy's conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 2008.

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