We're now well past the holiday season and some bad news has come out for one of the biggest physical gaming retailers: GameStop holiday sales have declined almost 30% in the nine weeks holiday period.
A press release target towards investors broke down the numbers, which we'll detail here:
- Total sales for the nine-week holiday period ending January 4, 2020, were $1.83 billion.
- This marks a 27.5% decrease for the same period the previous year across the entire company.
- Total comparable store sales for the period decreased by 24.7%.
- This means that the numbers for a particular store decreased by 24.7% as compared to the previous year for that store.
"We expected a challenging sales environment for the holiday season as our customers continue to delay purchases ahead of anticipated console launches in late 2020," said GameStop CEO George Sherman. "However, the accelerated decline in new hardware and software sales coming out of black Friday and throughout the month of December was well below our expectations, reflective of overall industry trends. On a positive note, we continued to see growth in the Nintendo Switch platform, which supports our view that our sales will strengthen as new consoles and innovative technology are introduced."
GameStop Holiday Sales Mark 'Adjusted Net Loss' for the Fiscal Year 2019
The lower GameStop holiday sales, while anticipated, are nonetheless causing them to advise shareholders that comparable store sales are likely to be down for 2019. In total, they expect there to be 19–21% lower comparable store sales for the fiscal year 2019. One positive item of note is that the Nintendo Switch has been a strong performer for the retail chain.
Full financial details for 2019 are expected to be released in late March 2020. It's not all bad news going forward, though — this year's anticipated launches of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 (along with the possibility of yet another new Nintendo Switch model) mean that there may well be an uptick in the retail business for Holiday 2020.
What do you think about GameStop holiday sales going down last year? Do you think this is reflective of a move away from physical retailers or was it just a tough year while people waited for new consoles to come out? Let us know in the comments below!
