Abrams Capital Management Owns 5.45 Million Shares Of The Newly Spun-off Barnes & Noble Education Inc. (BNED)

The freshly-appointed CEO of Barnes & Noble Education, Michael Huseby, believes that the spin-off will allow the company to focus on the key things that are important for its business. The access to the capital markets will enable the company to accomplish development ideas and plans that it has been wanting to implement for quite some time. Put simply, the spin-off will allow Barnes & Noble Education to accelerate its growth strategy by enhancing its business focus. According to Michael Huseby, the spun-off company will now channel more capital towards developing its digital platform through the company’s app, Yuzu. This app enables students to rent and save eTextbooks on their smart devices, which actually improves education and lowers costs. Nevertheless, the digital textbooks represent just the beginning of the company’s development strategy for its digital platform, as there are a lot of different media that can be brought into digital education. However, let’s not forget to mention that the competitive advantage of Barnes & Noble Education lies in the fact that the company owns on-campus bookstores. Thus, the company should also focus on pushing forward development plans in this segment as well.

Ultimately, Barnes & Noble Education intends to expand through both organic growth and mergers and acquisitions over the coming years. The organic growth is anticipated to come from its bookstores and websites, but the company has also revealed its plans to explore some of the strategic opportunities the company has with digital and content partners in order to grow the company more than just organically. The College segment delivered revenues of $1.77 billion for Barnes & Noble in the full fiscal year 2015 that ended May 2. At the same time, this segment saw an increase of 48 new stores last year, excluding the addition of 24 stores so far this year.

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