Best Buy names Jason Bonfig as new CEO, replacing Corie Barry

Best Buy said Wednesday that company veteran Jason Bonfig will succeed Corie Barry as the retailer’s CEO on Oct. 31, taking over as Best Buy tries to break a run of stagnant sales.

Bonfig, 49, is chief customer, product and fulfillment officer and rose through the ranks after joining the retailer as an inventory analyst in 1999. He will become Best Buy’s sixth chief executive officer and join the company’s board.

Barry will stay on as a strategic advisor for six months after stepping down, the company said in a news release. She is the second-longest tenured CEO in the company’s history after its founder, Dick Schulze.

Best Buy’s leadership change comes as the retailer tries to get back to meaningful sales growth and capitalize on the wave of artificial intelligence-enabled mobile phones and laptops.

In an interview with CNBC, Barry said Best Buy is in a good moment for a transition. She said the company is seeing “an upward swing of momentum” as customer and employee metrics improve and it enters a stage where artificial intelligence has begun to reshape the world of consumer electronics.

“It’ll change the way we work. It’ll change the way people shop, but in our industry in particular, it will change the devices we sell materially,” she said, describing that as a three- to five-year journey.

“It’s important for someone to steer that kind of next horizon,” she said.

Bonfig told CNBC that AI will not only refresh the products that Best Buy sells, but also open up new categories and new features for customers. For example, he said, Ray-Ban Meta glasses didn’t exist before.

“You’ll see us continue to make sure we’re as quick as possible to bring those in front of our customers, both digitally and in our stores,” he said.

Barry said Bonfig is well suited to take the helm, since he oversees crucial parts of Best Buy’s strategy to drive more sales and higher profits, including its third-party digital marketplace, which launched in the U.S. in August, and its advertising business, Best Buy Ads.

In his current role, Bonfig also oversees merchandising, marketing, supply chain and e-commerce.

Best Buy’s CEO transition comes as its sales have lagged in the past four years, which Best Buy has attributed to a slower housing market, price-conscious U.S. consumers and less tech innovation.

The company said at least some of those dynamics will likely persist this fiscal year. Best Buy said in early March that it expects revenue to range between $41.2 billion and $42.1 billion, compared with $41.69 billion last fiscal year. It expects adjusted earnings per share to range from $6.30 to $6.60, after it reported adjusted earnings per share of $6.43 for the previous fiscal year. 

It said comparable sales, a metric that tracks sales online and in stores open at least 14 months, will range from a decline of 1% to an increase of 1%.

Barry, 51, will step down after nearly seven years in the company’s top job. She became the first woman to lead Best Buy when she started in the role in June 2019. She led Best Buy through a period marked by rapid changes and spikes in demand — including a rush to buy computer monitors and kitchen appliances during the Covid pandemic — along with supply chain headaches, high inflation and President Donald Trump’s sharp increase in global tariffs.

David Kenny, chair of the company’s board of directors, said in a statement that Barry “guided Best Buy with a confident and steady hand and an unrelenting commitment to drive value for our employees, customers, partners and shareholders through some of the most tumultuous and uncertain times we have ever seen.”

Best Buy’s stock has reflected that turbulence, too. On the day she began as CEO, the price of the company’s shares were $65.52, but they shot up to an all-time closing high of $138 on Nov. 22, 2021.

Shares of Best Buy closed Tuesday at $66.59, bringing the company’s market cap to $13.93 billion. As of Tuesday’s close, Best Buy’s stock is up about 7% over the past year and down about 0.5% this year. That compares with the S&P 500’s approximately 37% gains and 3% rise, respectively, during the same time periods.

The company’s shares were down more than 4% in morning trading on Wednesday.

Best Buy faces some skepticism among investors. Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs downgraded the company’s stock from buy to sell.

In an equity research note, retail analyst Kate McShane said the company may get a bounce from higher tax refunds in the first quarter of the year as customers buy new devices. Yet she said she expects sales and margins to come under pressure during the rest of the year as higher memory costs drive up the price of computers and laptops and consumers trade down to cheaper devices.

Plus, she said, Best Buy’s sales of appliances and other consumer electronics have lagged, even as competitors like Home Depot and Lowe’s have posted stronger sales trends.

Regardless of the economic backdrop, Bonfig said Best Buy’s teams “are always focused on staying as close to our customers as possible,” whether shoppers want value, ease or inspiration.

Barry said Best Buy’s business model as a specialty consumer electronics retailer works best “when we see innovation intersect with replacement cycles” — a dynamic that she said is returning again. One sign of that, she said, is the company’s nine straight quarters of sales growth in computing.

“We’re starting to see the indicators,” she said. “As more innovation proliferates, we feel like we’re set up well to capitalize on that.”