Barnes And Noble Sparks After News Of Spin-off Hits Surface

Shares of Barnes and Noble BKS on Wednesday afternooon were up more than six percent after an unconfirmed report from dealReporter leaked that the retailer would spin-off its Nook brand.

Shares of Barnes and Noble have been hit hard over the course of the past week, when Liberty Media LMCA announced it was selling a majority of its stake in the company to “qualified institutional buyers.”

This isn't the first time that Barnes and Noble announced a potential spin-off of Nook. Back in 2012, the retailer stated that it was exploring a potential spin-off of its Nook e-reader unit so it could continue to scale the business.

William Lynch, former CEO of Barnes and Noble, said in 2012, “In Nook, we've established one of the world's best retail platforms for the sale of digital copyright content. We have a large and growing installed base of millions of satisfied customers buying digital content from us, and we have a NOOK business that's growing rapidly year-over-year and should be approximately $1.5 billion in comparable sales this fiscal year.

"Between continued projected growth in the U.S., and the opportunity for Nook internationally in the next 12 months, we expect the business to continue to scale rapidly for the foreseeable future.”

Shares of BKS have leaped nearly 30 percent year-to-date.