End of an Era: Barnes and Noble’s Acquired and Being Taken Private

I have such fond memories of Barnes and Noble’s. When I was young the library was the primary place to get books and do research. Later on, Barnes and Noble’s came to the scene and was viewed as this giant corporate bookstore that was menacing small shops out of business. If you’ve ever seen the 90s hit movie “You’ve Got Mail” — you’d know the film was talking about good old Barnes.

As a young adult and father of 3, I visited the store at least once per week. We loved it there, especially because it was so big and even had Starbucks inside of it. As a young stockbroker, it was one of the first stocks I pitched to prospective clients. The pitch was easy — Amazon was a flash in the pan competitor who would eventually fail — because Barnes had the real estate and the true connections to their customers. People ate it up.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, that was all horseshit. While BKS came to the scene as a giant corporate monster ferrying small bookstores to the waste bin — they ended up the small bookstore being executed by the new and bigger evil corporate monster — Amazon.

Funny how that worked.

End of an area — Barnes and Noble’s has agreed to be acquired and will be going private.

Barnes & Noble to be acquired by Elliott Advisors for $6.50/share in cash, or approximately $683 mln (5.96)
The $6.50 per share purchase price represents a 43% premium to the 10-day volume weighted average closing share price of Barnes & Noble’s common stock ended June 5, 2019, the day before rumors of a potential transaction were reported in the media. The announced transaction with Elliott is the culmination of an extensive Strategic Alternative Review conducted by the Special Committee of the Barnes & Noble Board of Directors, which was announced on October 3, 2018.