Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer, lowered its 2008 profit estimate on Tuesday, blaming a softening economy that's steering shoppers away from high-margin items like flat-screen TVs.
Shares of Best Buy, whose rivals include Circuit City Stores , Tweeter Home Entertainment Group as well as Wal-Mart, slipped in early trade after the company also forecast a full year profit that also fell short of Wall Street analysts views.
"Pricing has been fairly stable,” Mitchell Kaiser, analyst at Piper Jaffray, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday. “Big ticket items aren’t selling. We think it’s unit demand at this point more than anything else.”
Best Buy reported net income of $192 million, or 39 cents a share for its fiscal first quarter that ended June 2, from $234 million, or 47 cents a share, a year earlier.
Analysts, on average, had been expecting it to earn 50 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates.