Best Buy Highlights Black Friday Flop

After weeks of obnoxious hype surrounding Black Friday, after being practically preached to in our sleep by insufferable advertising and marketing campaigns, November's retail sales missed in a big way and retail professionals up and down the country were made to feel a bit silly. According to

, the speculation about a record Black Friday was little more than a lie, and everything missed. No company highlights the fact better than Best Buy

, who reported operating EPS of $0.47 vs. $0.54 LY, below the recently raised estimate and consensus of $0.51. On Tuesday morning, shares of BBY were being smashed into the ground in pre-market trading. According to

, “The stock has plunged more than 8% to trade just north of $25 in electronic trading as investors bail in the wake of a 13% drop in third-quarter earnings. What's more, Best Buy said that it expects profit margins to fall by about half a percentage point in fiscal 2012, with same-store sales arriving flat to down 3%. For the third quarter, Best Buy posted a profit of $154 million, or 42 cents per share, down from $217 million, or 54 cents per share, last year. Revenue rose to $12.01 billion from $11.89 billion a year ago. Analysts were expecting earnings of 52 cents per share on revenue of $12.13 billion.” For the retail sector, BBY is just part of the story. Advance retail sales for November (including Thanksgiving) came in at 0.2 percent, while the expectations were 0.6 percent. Tyler Durden writes that, “Retail sales less autos was 0.2%, half of the expected 0.4%, while ex Auto and Gas also printed at 0.2%, also missing big. So... where did all the money go, aside from generating even more negative profits for retailers, who now have to eat a huge cash hole in addition to everything?” That's a good question, and the

does not really answer it, reading in part, “The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $399.3 billion, an increase of 0.2 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month and 6.7 percent (±0.7%) above November 2010. Total sales for the September through November 2011 period were up 7.4 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The September to October 2011 percent change was revised from +0.5 percent (±0.5)* to +0.6 percent (±0.3%). Retail trade sales were up 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from October 2011, and 6.8 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Nonstore retailers sales were up 13.9 percent (±2.3%) from November 2010 and gasoline stations sales were up 12.9 percent (±1.7%) from last year.” So Black Friday was, in fact, a nonsense. The economy was not saved by deal-hungry consumers. A word to the wise – it will not be next year either.