The shares of Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) are trading higher on Thursday driven by uncertainties regarding the report that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was planning to open hundreds of brick-and-mortar bookstores.
The stock price of Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) surged more than 13% to $8.29 per share at the time of this writing, around 1:43 in the afternoon in New York.
Amazon has no plan to open a chain of physical bookstores
Sandeep Mathrani, the CEO of General Growth Properties (NYSE:GGP), a shopping mall operator, was recently quoted saying that Amazon was planning to open as much as 400 physical bookstore based on his understanding.
“You’ve got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400,” said Mr. Mathrani in response to a question regarding mall traffic by an analyst during an earnings call on Tuesday.
His statement sent the stock price of Barnes & Noble down by more than 14% over the past two days. Investors were concerned that the e-commerce giant could challenge the bookstore operator directly.
On Wednesday, Mr. Mathrani clarified that his response to the question “was not intended to represent Amazon’s plans.”
A report from TechCrunch indicated that the e-commerce giant has no plan to open a chain of physical bookstores based on information from a person close to Amazon.
Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Seattle in November, This is probably the reason behind the speculation that the e-commerce giant was planning to expand Amazon Books, the name of its first physical bookstore.
Barnes & Noble trade-in/trade-up promotion
Yesterday, Barnes & Noble announced its trade-in/trade-up in-store promotion for existing NOOK customers. The bookseller is offering a $50 credit to customers who want to purchase a new NOOK by Samsung until March 5.
According to the bookseller, customers have the option to get the 9.6-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab E NOOK for $179.99 and the 8-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 NOOK for $299.99 or the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK for only $89.99.
Barnes & Noble stock performance
Barnes & Noble rebounded, but the company’s stock price is still down by more than 4%.
Over the past 52 weeks, the shares of the company declined from its highest trading price of $29 to as low as $7.25 per share. Barnes & Noble lost more than 65% of stock value over the past year.
