Best Buy Increases Dividends Even As the Company Faces Leadership Crisis

Best Buy announced an increase in its dividends by one cent per share marking a 6 percent increase to 17 cents per share. The quarterly dividend would be payable on October 2, 2012 to shareholders of record as of September 11, 2012, the company’s press release said.

The move comes amid the stock price testing its 52-week low, Brian Dunn quitting abruptly as its CEO and its founder and Chairman Richard Schulze also resigning. The Board of Directors have launched a global search to fill in these positions and steer the company through rough waters even as Mike Mikan holds the reins together as an interim CEO.

Best Buy faces intense competition from online retailers when customers come into stores only to get a look and feel of a product and then buy it at a much cheaper price from Amazon and other online retailers. To cut itself to size, Best Buy had announced in April to close 50 stores and cut as much as $800 million in costs.

Among the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Pacifica Capital Investments managed by Steve Leonard and David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital have a sizeable portions of their portfolios in Best Buy.