Brian J. Dunn
Analyst · ISI
Thanks, Jim. I'd like to address the elements of the transformation work we announced this morning, but I'd like to begin by providing a bit of context on the actions we've been taking over the last few years and how those fit into our larger strategy. In the last 3 years, the industry experienced little innovation in many of the large traditional CE categories such as television, PCs and gaming. At the same time, consumers have enjoyed greater price transparency and ease of cross shopping. As a result, we knew we had to accelerate our cost reduction efforts, adjust our sales mix and significantly improve on the experience we were delivering for our customers, all of this in the most uncertain consumer and economic environment we've ever experienced. Last year, to better navigate the "new normal" consumer environment, we took some important steps to begin transforming the company and focusing on strategies we felt offered the best opportunities to deliver improved returns. We significantly restructured our International business, closing our big box stores in Shanghai, Turkey and the U.K. when it became clear these investments would not deliver meaningful returns consistent with timely expectations. As Jim mentioned, in November, we acquired CPW's interest in the Best Buy Mobile profit-sharing agreement. These 2 sets of transactions alone are expected to deliver over $250 million in benefits to Best Buy in fiscal 2013. But as I said at the top of the call, despite these actions and despite closing out the year at the upper half of our most recent earnings forecast, I'm not satisfied with the pace or degree of change we've made up to this point. This is why today we announced a series of actions intended to improve our operating performance and further develop the multichannel "shop anywhere, anytime, any way" experience we offer customers. To drive the transformation in fiscal year 2013 and beyond, we are focused on 4 strategic imperatives: one, multiyear cost reductions; two, U.S. store format improvements in the context of our multichannel strategy; three, growth initiatives; four, improved customer experience. Before I dive into these, I want to emphasize the fact that each of them lives in the service of a dramatically improved customer experience. I'll begin with multiyear cost reductions. We are taking several actions designed to significantly lower our cost base. These moves are intended to help us be more efficient and nimble and, of course, to drive our initiatives to grow earnings over the long term. Our plan is to free up financial capacity to invest in areas that will provide the greatest returns and invest in significant enhancements to the customer experience. In total, we expect to take out $800 million in cost and expense through fiscal 2015, with $250 million of the savings expected to be realized in fiscal 2013. These planned reductions primarily fall into 3 areas: retail stores, corporate and support structure, and cost of goods sold. More specifically, we expect to achieve these cost savings as follows. Under retail stores, the largest component is the closure of 50 U.S. Best Buy big box stores this fiscal year that didn't meet our investment criteria. Also included in this category is savings associated with the new store operating model. The cost savings in corporate and support structure will come from IT services, non-merchandise purchases, reduction of positions in our corporate and support areas, and a reduction in outside consultant services. Savings in cost of goods sold will be driven by reduction of product transition costs, lower product return and exchange expenses, and other various supply chain efficiencies. Savings from these cost reductions will be primarily targeted to fund enhancements to our customer experience and drive improved returns, and I'll provide more on the improved customer experience in a few minutes. The second strategic imperative is U.S. store format improvements in the context of our multichannel strategy. As we continue to focus on making it easier for customers to shop with us anywhere, anytime and any way they want, we are evolving our retail store strategy. We're increasing our points of presence while decreasing overall square footage and increasing profit per square foot. The changes we're making to our store portfolio are not only intended to decrease costs, but they also increase our flexibility. This strategy complements our fast-growing online channel by making Best Buy more accessible across multiple channels. I'm very excited about the first stage of this work. We intend to totally transform and completely reset 2 full markets to demonstrate how our combined big box and small box presence enables us to provide a better customer experience, accelerate profitable areas like connections and services, increase customer touch points and improve profitability and returns. On the big box side of the equation, we are rolling out at-scale market tests of our new Connected Stores in the most compelling value propositions in the Twin Cities and San Antonio. The Twin Cities will be fully deployed by this fall, with San Antonio completed before the holiday season. We haven't talked much about the new Connected Store model, so allow me to provide you with a brief overview. Connected Stores are remodeled big box stores that focus on connections, services and an enhanced multichannel experience. This is a total transformation of a big box store, including physical changes and a new store operating model, all designed to provide the customer a dramatically improved experience as he or she shops for technology and the connections, content and services that make it work for them. Some unique parts of the store. The stores are focused on driving key growth enablers of connections, services and our multichannel capabilities, like introducing great service products like Buy Back and Tech Support, or sending new tablet owners walking out with a wireless plan. We'll now have one larger combined team in computing and mobile phones and tablets that's on a singular mission to grow market share in hardware; accessories; services; and in particular, profitable connections. A new central knowledge desk in the center of the store, which will provide a central place to assist customers with services and connections and offer training and classes. The stores will also have expanded Geek Squad services anchored at the front of the store for improved customer service and employee experience. The stores will transform the traditional front-of-store checkout to a dedicated multichannel experience, including enhanced in-store pickup. And we're going to accelerate the opening of more Pacific Kitchen and Bath and Magnolia Design Centers inside our bigger Best Buy stores. These premium value propositions have proven results, with Pacific Sales' store-within-a-store delivering more than double the comp growth of a Best Buy appliance department. And current stores with the Magnolia Design Center store-within-a-store are achieving double the comp growth over previous Magnolia Home Theater areas. As part of the tests in the Twin Cities and San Antonio, we plan to decrease the big box square footage in aggregate across the 2 markets by almost 20% from store closures and downsizing of stores; and increase our customer touch points or doors by over 20%, driven by the continued build out of more Best Buy Mobile stand-alone stores in these markets. We'll also be introducing a new labor model, which I'll talk about later. And in these markets, we'll build out, as previously mentioned, 11 Pacific Sales Kitchen and Bath and 4 Magnolia Design Centers in select big box stores. This test in the Twin Cities and San Antonio is based on several early versions of the Connected Store pilots we did in the Las Vegas markets and several others over the last year. The Las Vegas test stores generated a significant sales and gross margin lift compared to other stores located in a similar geography, and these results were achieved with less square footage in the Vegas stores. These at-scale market tests in the Twin Cities and San Antonio will provide important data to inform the further evolution of our retail strategy and footprint, providing us an opportunity to reintroduce a new Best Buy experience to new and returning customers, and helping us determine the pace and magnitude of future actions and other store-based adjustments in the coming years. Of course, as a critical component to our evolving retail model, we will continue to open the profitable Best Buy Mobile small-format stores throughout the U.S., with plans to open 100 new locations this fiscal year. Our stand-alone mobile stores perform very well with customers and are on the path to generate strong financial returns. These locations have the highest customer satisfaction scores among Best Buy store formats, and we are happy with the financial results and see long-term value to the enterprise from our small box strategy. At full scale, we expect these stores will deliver an IRR of over 20%. Our third strategic imperative is growth initiatives. We will continue to invest to prioritize the opportunities in existing businesses through 4 key growth initiatives: e-commerce, connections, services and China. These initiatives are expected to be both revenue and margin accretive to our model. We've made good improvement in our e-commerce offering for customers, combining an improved online shopping experience with the multichannel benefits of in-store pickup. We expect our U.S. e-commerce revenue to grow 15% in fiscal 2013, almost twice the estimated growth of the overall market. Our growth in this channel is being driven largely by improvements we have put in place, including competitive online pricing; broader use of free shipping, which has proven to be a powerful value proposition; the doubling of our online SKU count; and the addition of the Best Buy Marketplace, which significantly expanded our range of assortment, price points and brands. Going forward, Stephen Gillett, our new EVP and President of Best Buy Digital, will play an important role in taking our e-commerce strategies to the next level. Stephen is tasked with accelerating our global digital strategy, entertainment offerings, multichannel capabilities and business development. He most recently helped lead Starbucks to a place at the forefront of digital retailing, and I'm very excited by what he'll do, not only to revitalize our digital relevance, but to use innovative digital thinking to create a genuinely seamless experience for our customers across channels, virtual and physical. There continues to be a tremendous opportunity for Best Buy to solve connectivity issues for our customers, a real pain point for many people. Our sales of connections in the U.S. are targeted to grow 15% in fiscal 2013. The continued growth from Best Buy Mobile will be an important driver of this performance, of course, and the other critical piece of the equation is our ability to bring the mobile connections expertise to other parts of our business, including tablets and computing, to drive increased attachments of connections, accessories and services. It's early in the expansion of the mobile model to tablets, but we already see a few encouraging data points of the mobile model at work. One quick example, based on the successful launch of the new iPad: compared to our launch of the iPad 2, the recent launch of the new iPad saw a 60% higher attach rate on Geek Squad Black Tie service and a significant improvement in the activation rates of broadband connections, which come with bounties, therefore generating a potentially more profitable transaction. Our services offering continues to be one of our biggest differentiators and one which provides us a lot of incremental opportunity. Our Domestic services revenue is expected to grow 10% in fiscal 2013, driven primarily through 3 initiatives: the continued performance of our leading Black Tie warranty program across fast-growing categories such as mobile phones and tablets; the expansion of in-store service offerings like our popular Geek Squad Tech Support program launched early last year, which offers customers both in-store and remote support; and the new and very promising small and medium business opportunity via the combination of our existing business and the new capability and product offerings available from our expanded business products and the mindSHIFT acquisition last year. Moving on to China. One important tenet of our China strategy is the expansion of our profitable Five Star stores. At full scale, we expect the Five Star stores will deliver an IRR of approximately 25%. We previously stated that we expected to do $4 billion in sales and reach 400 to 500 stores by fiscal 2016, and we are on track to accomplish that objective. Another tenet of our strategy is mobile. I'm pleased to announce that we are implementing a mobile store-within-a-store concept inside Five Star stores this summer. We expect to have 6 up and running by July and another 8 to launch in August. These stores will be our first in China under our new Global Connect strategic alliance with Carphone Warehouse. You will recall that we announced a Global Connect venture late last fall. Its purpose is to bring the combined expertise and success CPW and Best Buy have had in mobile phones and connectivity to additional retail partners around the world. Based on what we've learned together in the United States and the global experience of our team in China, I'm confident we can bring a higher-value experience to consumers in China. Beyond China, we have also been very pleased with the response from a broader set of potential partners around the globe. Our fourth strategic imperative is improved customer experience. While we have always taken pride in providing a great customer experience, we know we need to strengthen these experiences through our employees across any and all of our channels, regardless of how and where customers interact with us. We can't just claim to offer great service. We need to earn that right every day with every customer to ensure it is our #1 competitive advantage. It's my intention that today's announcement represents just the first installment of several planned enhancements to our customer experience, and we will have more to talk about in the months and quarters ahead. But I want to highlight a few things we're doing right now: We recently introduced the Perfect Match Promise for all items purchased at Best Buy. Perfect Match Promise is designed to help customers find the technology match that meets their unique needs, backed by a simple yet powerful value proposition we call "30-30-30." 30 days of free phone support to get products up and running, 30 days of easy returns with no restocking fees and 30 days of competitor price matching. Our popular Reward Zone loyalty program is about to get even better for more than 40 million members. Beginning in April, we'll be making improvements that make it easier for our members to redeem their points, both online and in-store. And in addition, over the next several months, we'll be enhancing the top-tier of our already industry-leading Reward Zone program, Premier Silver. These important customers account for a significant percentage of our profits. And to further recognize their loyalty, we'll be improving their free shipping benefit to include free expedited shipping for any order from BestBuy.com, a benefit comparable to Amazon Prime. In addition to free shipping, we are offering free delivery where we will deliver, unpack and connect basic appliances to existing utility service; launching our Premier access perk where our top customers get premier access to new technology, popular products and iconic sales events, like on Black Friday, giving them a free house call from our Geek Squad where our expert agents will solve their most common technology headaches; improving their no-hassle return and price match policy to 60 days; all the while continuing their 25% point bonus and extra point flexibility. At Best Buy, a positive customer experience and a positive employee experience are inextricably linked. We know we cannot deliver one without the other. And as part of our actions to significantly improve our customer experience, we will be making important changes later this year to our store operating model that are designed to drive a differentiated employee experience. Our intent is to ensure Best Buy stores are a great place for our employees to work, a place where they are inspired and rewarded, which in turn creates a positive impact on the customer experience and business performance. As part of this change, we will be implementing enhanced training, recognition and reward programs that reinforce the behaviors that deliver great customer experiences. Key elements of the new model include increased training. We are planning a 40% increase in employee training to ensure employees have the skills and knowledge to deliver a differentiated experience, matching customers with the right technology for their needs from our industry-leading assortment of brands, platforms, plans and services. As part of this increased training investment, we will be implementing a program this summer in which all new hires receive a significant increase in training within their first 30 days of employment. The second key element is an enhanced compensation model. This model, rolling out this summer, will provide financial incentives for delivering on customer service and business goals. The model and the incentives will vary based on the teams and individual roles within the store, but the intent is very simple: all store employees are eligible to participate in a plan. The whole store works together to create great customer experiences and meet business goals, and all employees share in a successful outcome. We know changes like this work because we've deployed similar programs in parts of our stores already. For example, in Best Buy Mobile, the increased training, recognition and performance-based rewards have had a material positive impact on the customer experience, comps and profits, with all 3 of those critical metrics routinely performing well above our aggregate store performance. One additional element of the model I want to highlight today is a streamlined communication process between corporate business teams, field leadership and the stores. The changes we are making over the next few months will increase the speed and clarity of information sent from corporate to the stores, as well as the store team's ability to offer feedback on what's working and what's not. The result will be a more nimble organization that can respond faster to challenges and opportunities within the business. I'm going to turn it back to Jim in a moment to provide you with a look at our fiscal year 2013 guidance, but I've just given you a lot of information about our transformation strategy and actions, so let me sum it up briefly. We are revising our portfolio of store formats and footprints to improve the customer experience across all channels and to improve store performance and productivity, closing some big box stores, modifying others to our Connected Store format and adding more Best Buy Mobile locations. We intend to reinvest some of the expected $800 million in cost savings back into the marketplace by offering improved customer experiences and even more competitive prices. Over time, we expect a portion of the savings will fall to the bottom line in the form of increased operating profit. And at the same time, we are accelerating our key growth initiatives: connections, services, e-commerce and our business in China. Looking specifically at the year ahead in our guidance, while I'm excited about the strategy we have for the future and the specific actions we have put in place to improve the business, I feel it's important to be pragmatic in the near-term outlook and take into account the realities we face today: first and importantly, as you have seen, sales in the traditional CE industry, from which we still currently derive the largest portion of our sales, are expected to be down again in fiscal 2013; second, we continue to face an uncertain consumer environment; and third, the significant changes we've introduced will take time for the benefits to flow through and reach their full scale of contribution. This is how I see the environment today, but we will benefit when market and macroeconomic conditions improve. And we are well positioned to grow earnings and improve ROIC more meaningfully over time, during our continued transformation in fiscal 2013 and more fully in the years ahead. Now back to Jim.