Barnes & Noble (BKS, $6.95) Contemplates Selling Itself - Stock Climbs +20%

Barnes & Noble, Inc. might want to sell the company. Its stock jumped +20% on the news.

On Wednesday, the book store chain said that it has appointed a committee to review acquisition offers, including the one that came from chairman Len Riggio who currently owns 20% of the company’s equity. According to the Barnes & Noble board, Riggio would vote his shares in favor of any transaction recommended by the review committee. Also, an investor holding a 7% stake has reportedly expressed his interest in buying the company to Riggio .

Barnes & Noble also suggested that an unidentified shareholder is apparently trying to aggressively increase their stake in the company. Should the unidentified party accumulate 20% of the stock or more, the firm will implement the poison pill – which will allow shareholders to buy Barnes & Noble's stock at a 50% discount thereby diluting the value of the shares. The company plans to take this step in order to prevent a hostile/unapproved takeover.

Sales at Barnes & Noble have declined during each of the past four years. Last year, same-store sales dropped 6.1% compared to the previous year.

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Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D. has a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow University and has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, investor, manager, and mathematician. His professional expertise is in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, system and pattern analysis, and software and hardware system integration. He has served as the CEO of several hi-tech start-up companies and nonprofit organizations, which has given him proven capabilities in business strategy for high-tech start-up companies, market assessment, company formation, team building, product development, marketing, and sales. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines on related fields. As a retail investor, he spent 15 years developing his proprietary trading and quantitative algorithms (now Tickeron’s A.I.), which brought him significant returns in trading the stock market. His current work and goal in founding Tickeron is to bring professional, sophisticated stock market analysis capabilities to retail investors via an easy-to-use interface.