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Barnes & Noble Is About To Go Belly Up

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(Roger Yu)  Investors are dumping shares of Barnes & Noble Wednesday after the bookseller said its fiscal first quarter loss widened to $34.9 million amid slumping sales of books and digital content.

The New York-based retailer said its loss per share totaled 68 cents, falling short of 12 cents per-share profit estimated by analysts.

Quarterly sales dipped 1.5% to $1.22 billion. In the year-ago period, Barnes & Noble reported $28.4 million of loss.

Shares fell 28% to end the day at $11.80.

To focus on the retail business that has been rocked by e-readers and online books, the company has made dramatic restructuring moves in recent months. It spun off the college bookstore business and partnered with Samsung for hardware manufacturing of its Nook tablets.

It also hired a new CEO, tapping former Brookstone chief Ronald Boire in July. Boire formally started his new job Tuesday.

“As we look to the second quarter and beyond, we are focused on opportunities to increase comparable store sales and reduce expenses,” CFO Allen Lindstrom said in a statement.

Revenue for the retail business, which includes Barnes & Noble bookstores and BN.com, fell 1.7% to $939 million. Comparable store sales rose 1.1% as non-book sales grew.

The Nook unit’s revenue continues to plummet as other competitors, such as Apple and Amazon, firm up their market shares. Nook-related sales, including digital content, e-readers, and tablets, were down 22.4% to $54 million. Digital content sales fell 28% to $37 million. Device and accessories sales declined 6.2% to $17 million.

The college segment, which was spun off, had revenues of $239 million, up 5.7%.

For fiscal year 2016, the company continues to expect “retail core comparable bookstore sales,” which exclude sales of Nook products, to rise about 1%.