(Reuters) - Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE:BBY) on Thursday forecast downbeat full-year revenue after a disappointing holiday quarter, with the top U.S. electronics retailer shackled by shortages of popular gadgets from iPhones to PlayStations.
The company has wrestled with shortages of appliances, mobile phones and gaming consoles caused by a semiconductor chip crunch and supply-chain bottlenecks since the closing months of last year. A surge in transportation costs has also taken a toll on the company's profit margins.
"Q4 sales of $16.4 billion were impacted by more constrained inventory than expected, including some high-demand holiday items, and the temporary reduction in store hours in January due to Omicron-induced staffing challenges," Chief Executive Officer Corie Barry said in a statement.
Still, Best Buy's shares rose 5% in choppy premarket trading, after the company's strong fiscal 2025 revenue forecast, higher dividends and a new $5 billion share buyback program.
Sony Corp's latest PlayStation and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s Xbox One remain hard to get well over a year after launch, while Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) said in a January a shortage of iPhones, iPads and other gadgets over the holidays had cost it over $6 billion in sales.
The new COVID-19 variant hit thousands of retail workers late last year and in January, exacerbating a labor crunch during most of 2021.
Best Buy, a big beneficiary from pandemic-era home-working, said it expects full-year revenue of $49.3 billion to $50.8 billion. Analysts on average were expecting $51.05 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
The company also forecast fiscal 2023 earnings per share of $8.85 to $9.15, below estimates of $9.16.
Comparable sales fell 2.3% in the fourth quarter ended Jan. 29, bigger than analysts' estimate for a 0.2% dip.
Best Buy forecast fiscal 2025 revenue of $53.5 billion to $56.5 billion, largely above estimates of $53.51 billion, signaling a bounce back in two years. The company reported fiscal 2021 revenue of $51.76 billion.
The company also raised it quarterly dividend by 26%.