02:05 PM EDT, 05/30/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Best Buy ( BBY ) maintained its full-year financial outlook after reporting better-than-expected earnings for its fiscal first quarter on Thursday, sending the retailer's stock soaring.

The company continues to expect fiscal 2025 non-GAAP earnings in a range of $5.75 to $6.20 per share on revenue of $41.3 billion to $42.6 billion. Analysts polled by Capital IQ expect $6.05 and $41.98 billion, respectively. The company continues to expect its comparable sales to be between flat and down 3%, versus the Wall Street's view for a 1.4% drop.

"As we look to the rest of the year, we continue to expect sequential improvement in our comparable sales performance, however, we believe we are trending towards the midpoint of our annual comparable sales guidance," Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas said in a statement. Even at the midpoint of its comparable sales outlook, the company expects to deliver profitability at the high end of its non-GAAP operating income rate guidance of 3.9% to 4.1% due to a higher gross profit rate in its membership and services offerings, Bilunas added.

Best Buy ( BBY ) shares were up nearly 13% in Thursday afternoon trade. "We think today's stock move is largely a function of depressed sentiment coming into the print and is reversing the downward move from the last six weeks," Truist Securities said in a note. "Overall, we think the challenging environment will likely limit incremental upside, and we remain on the sidelines."

Best Buy ( BBY ) continues to expect sales in its computing category to show growth for the full year, though revenue for the rest of the product categories as a whole is likely to be down, partially countered by growth in services revenue, Chief Executive Corie Barry said on an earnings conference call, according to a Capital IQ transcript. For the ongoing three-month period, the company projects comparable sales to fall by 3%, versus the Street's call for a 2.2% drop.

Adjusted EPS rose to $1.20 for the quarter through May 4 from $1.15 a year earlier, while revenue fell to $8.85 billion from $9.47 billion. The Street had projected $1.07 and $8.97 billion, respectively.

"The mix of macro factors continued to create a challenging sales environment for our category during the quarter, and our sales were slightly softer than our expectations," Barry told analysts.

The company said its domestic revenue fell 6.8% to $8.20 billion amid a 6.3% comparable sales decrease, while international revenue slid 3.3% to $644 million. Enterprise comparable sales dropped 6.1% for the quarter. Barry said on the call that comparable sales were hit the most by appliances, home theater, gaming and phones, while services and laptops were areas of growth.

"Three months ago, there were several (macro) indicators showing some favorability, including decreasing inflation, continued low unemployment, encouraging trends in consumer confidence and the beginnings of a housing market rebound," Barry said on the call. "Since then, inflation is still high, mortgage rates are high and consumer confidence scores are trending lower."

Price: 80.96, Change: +9.06, Percent Change: +12.60