Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) stock is up today following positive speculation concerning the company.
A Barron’s piece by Andrew Bary claims that the bookseller is poised to fight off rival Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) now that e-books are holding a steady 15% of the market. The company is still profitable with a price/sales ratio of 0.2. BKS also offers a cash dividend of 5.3% to stockholders.
Barnes & Noble is expecting earnings to increase over the years. It expects EBITDA to be between $200 million and $250 million for the current fiscal year. BKS also expects this to increase to between $270 million to $310 million by the end of its 2020 fiscal year. There’s also the possibility that it could scooped up by a private equity firm or another company.
Barnes & Noble has a market value of $840 million and under $40 million in debt. It operates 640 physical retail stores across the United States. The company also has 6 million customers that pay $25 each a year to be part of its members program. The retention rate for this is more than 70%.
The Barron’s article argues that Barnes & Noble is a solid investment. When it was released over the weekend, BKS was sitting at roughly $11.50 per share. This could make it a cheap investment that could increase if only a couple of things went right for the company.
Barnes & Noble will be releasing its earnings report for its first fiscal quarter of 2017 on Thursday, September 8, 2016. The release will happen before the market opens. A conference call will start at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time that day.
BKS stock was up 10% as of Tuesday morning.
