The ugly decline of Barnes & Noble will remain a public spectacle on Wall Street.
Chairman Len Riggio said yesterday he has dropped his bid to take the struggling bookseller private — an announcement that, along with a wider-than-expected quarterly loss — sent the stock plummeting.
Shares of the retailer lost $2.06, or 12.4 percent, to close at $14.61.
“While I reserve the right to pursue an offer in the future, I believe it is in the company’s best interests to focus on the business at hand,” said Riggio, who in February had disclosed an interest in acquiring the 675-store chain.
B&N has a full plate, as its money-losing Nook tablet also has failed to find a buyer following last month’s departure of former CEO William Lynch.
Yesterday, B&N execs blamed the Nook’s hundreds of millions in losses partly on overly optimistic business forecasts.
While B&N’s color Nook tablet has gone extinct, the company will continue to sell e-readers. But recently B&N has been forced to slash prices on lower-end models amid skimpy sales.
In the fiscal first quarter, B&N said Nook sales slid 20 percent, versus the company’s overall revenue decline of 8.5 percent to $1.33 billion.