Citigroup Maintains Sell, $21 PT on Best Buy

Citigroup reiterates its Sell rating and $21 price target on Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) as its proprietary FPTV data on the company deteriorates sequentially on traffic challenges.

Citigroup notes, "Our proprietary FPTV data indicates that pricing for all TV sizes deteriorated by (24%) in January vs. (22.7%) in December and (26.1%) y/y in November. This remains well below the trailing 4 year average for the month of January of (10.3%). Two year stacks deteriorated to (37.5%) from (31.3%) in December, a (620bps) deterioration sequentially. We would note that our data captures end of December pricing, and in our opinion BBY's comp possibly improved sequentially in the back half of the month based on our traffic observations. We would note our traffic data indicates a pick up in traffic during the week ahead of Christmas (to positive MSD, vs. negative MSD in prior weeks)."

BBY closed at $24.29 per share on Friday.