Best Buy (BBY +0.40%) moved higher on Friday after the struggling consumer-electronics retailer posted somewhat encouraging news. Despite a sharp drop in international sales, domestic sales were flat during the critical holiday shopping season. A 10% pop in online sales was just enough to offset the slight decline in physical-store sales.
Given Best Buy's aggressive pricing and new seasonal price-matching policy, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out on the bottom line. It could get ugly. Best Buy hosed down its free cash flow outlook for fiscal 2013. However, the stock still moved initially higher on the news because it could've been worse. Isn't that the case for most Best Buy rallies these days?
Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.
- Skullcandy (SKUL +0.00%) moved higher after an article speculating that the earbud maker is an attractive acquisition target. Skullcandy has shed more nearly two-thirds of its value since going public at $20 two summers ago, so putting its shareholders out of their misery isn't an entirely bad idea.
- Baidu (BIDU +1.04%) rallied after a JPMorgan analyst waxed optimistically on the company's growth prospects for 2013. The stock has rallied so far in January after a rare down year in 2012. China's leading search engine has only closed lower in one other year since going public in 2005.
- Citi initiated coverage of SodaStream (SODA +0.00%) with a buy rating. The company behind the popular system that turns water into fizzy soft drinks has been posting stellar results since going public three years ago.
- Are Netflix (NFLX +0.39%) DVDs coming too quickly? A federal appeals court ruled that the video service's red mailers are getting an unfair advantage from the way the post office processes the rentals. Wait -- Netflix still offers DVDs? That's good to know.
