Microsoft sells Nook stake back to Barnes & Noble
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Did Microsoft get buyer’s remorse?
The software giant bought a big stake in Nook from Barnes & Noble in 2012. And now it’s selling it back.
Barnes & Noble had been struggling to get its e-reader on solid footing. While the Nook was well-reviewed, it was a late entrant to the e-reader race and had been plagued by delays. Like the Kindle, it added a tablet to its line, but overall it never made much of a dent in Amazon’s dominance of the field. Barnes & Noble spun the Nook off into its own hardware-and-ebooks unit to try to stanch the bleeding.
Microsoft stepped in with $300 million for a 17.6% stake in Nook. Now it’s stepping out with $62 million and 2.7 million Barnes & Noble shares -- what The Verge calls “a clear loss on Microsoft’s original investment.”
Barnes & Noble revealed the buy-back in an SEC filing Thursday. The Verge asked a Barnes & Noble representative for the reasoning behind it, and was told, “as the respective business strategies of each company evolved, we mutually agreed that it made sense to terminate the agreement.”
Book news and more; I’m @paperhaus on Twitter
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