Best Buy reports second quarter fiscal 2027 results before the US market opens on Thursday, August 27, 2026. The consumer electronics chain enters the print with an unusual problem: the biggest pressure on its numbers this quarter is not tariffs, it is the price of memory chips.
In short
- Date and consensus: Best Buy reports Q2 FY27 before the open on August 27, 2026, with analysts modelling roughly $9.56bn in revenue and $1.37 in adjusted EPS, according to consensus data compiled by MarketBeat.
- The squeeze: DRAM and storage costs have surged through 2026, and Gartner has estimated that combined DRAM and SSD price increases will push PC prices up about 17% and smartphone prices up about 13% versus 2025 levels.
- The lap: Q2 faces a hard comparison against last year’s console launch, which management sized at roughly $200m of prior-year revenue on the Q1 call.
- Tariff exposure is indirect: CEO Corie Barry has said Best Buy is the importer of record for only about 2% to 3% of what it sells, so duty costs and refunds mostly sit with vendors.
- Guidance is the real event: the company guided Q2 comparable sales to roughly 1% growth and a 3.9% operating income rate, and has so far held full-year adjusted EPS at $6.30 to $6.60.
What Best Buy reports on August 27
The release covers the 13-week quarter ending in early August 2026, the second quarter of Best Buy’s fiscal 2027. Results are scheduled before the opening bell, followed by a management conference call the same morning. The company publishes its quarterly materials through its investor relations site.
Consensus compiled by MarketBeat points to about $9.56bn of enterprise revenue and $1.37 of adjusted diluted earnings per share. That revenue figure would represent modest growth against the $9,438m Best Buy reported in the comparable quarter a year earlier. The EPS figure would represent a clearer step up from the $1.28 adjusted result posted in that prior-year period.
Best Buy has already told investors what it expects. On the first quarter call, management guided second quarter comparable sales to approximately 1% growth and an operating income rate of roughly 3.9%, broadly flat year over year. Those two numbers are the bar the print gets measured against.
Where the company stood at the last check-in
Best Buy’s first quarter of fiscal 2027, covering the 13 weeks ended May 2, 2026, came in ahead of its own outlook. Enterprise revenue was $8,936m against $8.76bn a year earlier, with comparable sales up 2.0%. Barry described that as growth “higher than our outlook” in the company’s results statement.
Profitability moved in the right direction. GAAP diluted EPS reached $1.31 versus $0.95 in the prior-year quarter, with net earnings of $276m against $202m. Adjusted diluted EPS was $1.28, and both the GAAP and adjusted operating income rates landed at 4.1%.
The segment split showed a domestic business growing slowly and an international business growing faster off a small base. Domestic revenue was $8,249m with comparable sales up 1.8%. International revenue was $687m with comparable sales up 4.7%.
Digital penetration held roughly steady rather than expanding. Domestic online revenue was $2,620m, up 1.4% on a comparable basis, representing 31.7% of domestic revenue. That is a mix that has now been broadly stable for several quarters, which matters for the cost structure discussion later in this article.
Why the memory cost squeeze matters more than tariffs this quarter
For most large US retailers reporting this season, the dominant variable has been tariffs and the refunds flowing back from them. Best Buy is different. Its category mix puts it directly in the path of a semiconductor component shock that has nothing to do with trade policy.
Memory prices have risen sharply through 2026 as artificial intelligence datacenter demand absorbed supply that would otherwise have gone into consumer devices. That shows up in the cost of laptops, desktops, phones, tablets and gaming hardware, which together account for a large share of Best Buy’s assortment.
Management flagged this directly on the first quarter call. Best Buy said memory cost pressures were expected to elevate average selling prices in the second and third quarters, and characterised the demand response as “muted”, meaning customers were expected to absorb higher prices rather than abandon purchases outright.
How DRAM prices actually moved
The scale of the move is unusual for a commodity component. Industry trackers reported that DRAM contract and spot prices rose steeply across 2025 and into 2026, with the sharpest increases concentrated in the chips used in consumer devices. In the second quarter of 2026, LPDDR5X memory prices reportedly rose about 89%, with DDR4 up by roughly half.
Spot pricing on individual chips tells the same story. Reporting through the period described a 16Gb DDR5 chip moving from single-digit dollars in late 2025 to well above $25 within months. Aftermarket module prices followed, with common desktop memory upgrades reportedly repricing several times over.
Storage has moved alongside memory. Solid state drive and flash storage costs have risen in parallel, which compounds the effect on finished devices because a typical laptop carries both. That is why the price effect is broader than a memory-only shock would suggest.
What Gartner expects for device prices and volumes
Gartner published a forecast in February 2026 warning that surging memory costs would reduce global PC and smartphone shipments during the year. The firm estimated that combined DRAM and SSD price increases of roughly 130% by the end of 2026 would lift PC prices by about 17% and smartphone prices by about 13% relative to 2025 levels.
On volumes, Gartner’s projection was for worldwide PC shipments to decline about 10.4% and smartphone shipments to fall about 8.4% in 2026. Those are meaningful contractions in two of Best Buy’s largest categories.
Major PC manufacturers have publicly moved prices. Reporting through 2026 indicated that Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer and ASUS confirmed laptop price increases in the range of 15% to 20%, with premium configurations rising further. Industry commentary has generally not expected component pricing to normalise before 2028.
For a retailer, this creates a genuinely two-sided quarter. Higher average selling prices support revenue per transaction, which flatters comparable sales. Lower unit volumes drag on traffic, attachment and services, and eventually on the installed base that drives future replacement demand.
How the gaming comparison distorts the quarter
The second quarter carries a specific and well-telegraphed headwind. Best Buy’s prior-year second quarter included a major console launch, and management sized that contribution at roughly $200m of revenue when discussing the lap on the first quarter call.
Gaming was one of the largest weighted drivers of Best Buy’s first quarter comparable sales growth, alongside computing, mobile phones and services. Lapping a launch of that size means gaming is likely to swing from a tailwind to a drag within a single quarter, without anything changing in the underlying business.
This is the main reason the guided comparable sales figure steps down from the 2.0% delivered in the first quarter to approximately 1% for the second. Investors reading the print should separate the mechanical lap effect from any genuine change in demand.
It also means the headline comparable sales number will be a poor summary of the quarter on its own. The category detail and the commentary on May, June and July trends will carry more signal than the aggregate figure, much as they did when Walmart’s second quarter results landed on August 20 and the composition mattered more than the top line.
What Best Buy’s tariff exposure actually looks like
Tariffs have dominated US retail earnings commentary throughout 2026, but Best Buy’s position in the supply chain gives it a different profile from a Walmart or a Target. The distinction is technical and it matters for both cost and refunds.
Importer of record versus vendor-borne duty
Barry has stated that Best Buy is “the importer of record for only about 2%-3% of what we sell.” For the remaining bulk of the assortment, the duty obligation sits with the vendor or an intermediary, not with Best Buy directly.
That structure cuts both ways. It limits Best Buy’s direct exposure to duty increases, because tariff costs arrive as vendor cost negotiations rather than as customs bills. It also limits the company’s ability to claim refunds directly when duties are later found to have been improperly collected.
The practical consequence is that tariff effects reach Best Buy’s P&L with a lag and through negotiation. Cost changes show up in vendor pricing, promotional funding and assortment decisions rather than as a discrete line item. That makes the effect harder to quantify from the outside than it is for a direct importer.
Where the refund money goes
Best Buy has said it is participating in the phase one refund processes and working with vendors on recoveries. Barry has been explicit about the intended use, stating that “any recovery of duties we have will be used to deliver value back to our customers.”
The company has also indicated that the amounts involved are small relative to its overall sales, given the limited importer of record footprint. That is a material contrast with the sums peers have disclosed, and it means a refund windfall is unlikely to be the story on August 27.
The wider refund picture remains unsettled. A large body of importers is still waiting on the outcome of litigation over duties collected under emergency economic powers, a process covered in more detail in our report on the pending IEEPA refund class certification. Retailers that filed early have started to receive money while others remain in the queue.
The pricing question has already been answered once. On the first quarter call, Best Buy addressed whether tariff costs were flowing into shelf prices. Barry’s assessment was that while duties affected parts of the assortment, they “did not result in overall ASP increases at the blended enterprise level.”
That framing is likely to be tested this quarter, because the memory shock pushes in the opposite direction. If blended average selling prices rise in the second quarter, the cause is more likely to be component costs in computing than tariffs across the wider assortment.
How Best Buy’s setup compares with peers that already reported
Most of the large US retail reporters have already printed their July-quarter numbers, which gives a useful frame for what Best Buy needs to deliver. The pattern across peers has been solid comparable sales supported in several cases by one-off tariff refund gains.
| Retailer | Reported | Comparable sales | Disclosed tariff refund effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walmart (Q2 FY27) | August 20, 2026 | US comps up 2.6% | Roughly $2.9bn eligible, directed to price cuts |
| Target (Q2 FY26) | August 19, 2026 | Comps up 3.8%, digital up 8.7% | $752m boost to net earnings, about $1.65 per share |
| Lowe’s (Q2 FY26) | August 19, 2026 | Full-year comps guided to flat | About 11 cents per share |
| Home Depot (Q2 FY26) | August 18, 2026 | Cited “frozen housing market conditions” | Not separately highlighted in results coverage |
| Best Buy (Q2 FY27) | August 27, 2026 | Guided to approximately 1% | Expected to be small; importer of record on 2% to 3% of sales |
The table makes the asymmetry clear. Walmart, Target and Lowe’s all reported quantified refund benefits, and in Walmart’s case the money was explicitly recycled into lower shelf prices, an approach examined in our analysis of how Walmart deployed its $2.9bn refund into price cuts.
Best Buy has no comparable lever. Its earnings quality this quarter therefore rests on operating execution, category mix and gross margin management rather than on a one-time customs recovery. In a season where several peers have flattered results with refunds, a clean operating beat would read differently.
The comparison also runs the other way on demand. Home Depot and Lowe’s are exposed to a housing market that has stayed frozen, while Best Buy’s replacement cycles in computing and mobile are driven by device age and carrier promotions rather than home transactions.
What the guidance math implies
Best Buy reiterated its full-year fiscal 2027 outlook at the first quarter mark rather than raising it despite the beat. Holding guidance after an above-plan quarter is a deliberate signal, and it usually reflects known headwinds later in the year.
| Metric | Q1 FY27 actual | Q2 FY27 guidance | FY27 full-year guidance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise revenue | $8,936m | Consensus about $9.56bn | $41.2bn to $42.1bn |
| Comparable sales | Up 2.0% | Approximately 1% | Down 1.0% to up 1.0% |
| Adjusted operating income rate | 4.1% | Approximately 3.9% | 4.3% to 4.4% |
| Adjusted diluted EPS | $1.28 | Consensus about $1.37 | $6.30 to $6.60 |
| Capital expenditure | Not separately guided | Not separately guided | Approximately $750m |
Two features of this table deserve attention. First, the full-year comparable sales range still contemplates a decline, even after a quarter that delivered 2.0% growth. That leaves room for the memory-driven volume contraction to bite in the back half.
Second, the full-year adjusted operating income rate of 4.3% to 4.4% sits above both the 4.1% delivered in the first quarter and the roughly 3.9% guided for the second. The implication is that Best Buy expects margin rate expansion concentrated in the third and fourth quarters, which are seasonally its largest.
That back-loading raises the stakes for the guidance update on August 27. If management holds the full-year range again, it is effectively reaffirming a stronger holiday period despite higher device prices and lower forecast industry volumes.
The arithmetic of a hold versus a trim
Delivering roughly $9.56bn in the second quarter would put first-half revenue near $18.5bn. Against a full-year range of $41.2bn to $42.1bn, that requires a second half in the region of $22.7bn to $23.6bn.
Those are achievable numbers given Best Buy’s seasonal skew toward the holiday quarter. They are not, however, trivially achievable if PC and smartphone unit volumes contract at the rates Gartner has forecast. Higher average selling prices would need to more than offset softer units.
Which categories carry the quarter
Best Buy reports enough category commentary on its calls to make the drivers legible. Four areas will decide whether the print clears the guided bar.
Computing has been Best Buy’s most consistent performer, with management citing nine consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales as of the first quarter call. It is also the category most directly exposed to memory and storage inflation, which makes it the single most informative line in the release.
The interaction is the thing to watch. If average selling prices rise while units hold up, computing becomes the quarter’s largest positive contributor. If customers trade down to lower-specification configurations, revenue growth softens and gross margin mix deteriorates at the same time.
There is a third possibility that would flatter the quarter for the wrong reasons. Buyers who anticipate further price increases may pull purchases forward, borrowing demand from later quarters. Commentary from PC manufacturers through 2026 has encouraged exactly that behaviour, and it would leave the back half thinner.
Mobile phones marked a fifth consecutive quarter of growth in the first quarter, which management attributed to carrier partnerships and improved in-store operations. This category is less about consumer discretionary appetite and more about carrier promotional intensity and upgrade cycle timing.
Smartphone prices are also forecast to rise on memory costs, though by less than PCs. Carrier subsidy structures can absorb part of that increase, which may leave mobile more insulated than computing. Instalment plans further blunt the sticker effect for consumers.
Gaming faces the hardest comparison of any category this quarter because of the prior-year launch. Absent a new hardware cycle, the category is likely to post a decline that is entirely explicable and largely irrelevant to the underlying trend.
Software, accessories and trade-in activity provide a partial offset. These carry higher margin rates than console hardware, so a gaming revenue decline does not translate proportionally into an operating income decline.
Appliances declined in the first quarter, consistent with a housing market that has not supported large home purchases and projects. Higher interest rates continue to defer the renovation and move-in demand that drives appliance replacement.
That weakness is corroborated by the home improvement retailers. Home Depot pointed to frozen housing market conditions in its August report, and Lowe’s guided full-year comparable sales down to flat from a prior range that allowed for growth. Best Buy’s appliance business sits in the same demand pool.
Home theater sits between the two dynamics. Large-screen television pricing has been comparatively stable, because panel costs have not moved the way memory has. The category depends on promotional cadence and is sensitive to the same discretionary caution that has suppressed appliances.
Services and membership contributed to first quarter comparable sales growth and carry a materially different margin profile from hardware. In a quarter where hardware gross margins face component cost pressure, services attachment becomes a more important part of the operating income story.
Membership economics also matter for the guidance question. Recurring revenue is less sensitive to unit volume swings than hardware, so a growing services mix supports the back-half margin rate expansion embedded in the full-year outlook.
What the trade calendar adds on the same day
August 27 is not only a Best Buy date. It is also the closing date for public comments on the Commerce Department’s proposal to add a further tranche of derivative articles to existing Section 232 tariff coverage, a process detailed in our coverage of the proposed 25% duties on 14 additional product groups.
Section 232 measures already touch the electronics supply chain. A 25% tariff on certain advanced semiconductors and their derivative products took effect in January 2026, with carve-outs that included products for non-datacenter consumer applications in the United States. The scope of those exemptions is what keeps most consumer devices outside the direct duty.
Any widening of derivative coverage would move that boundary. For a consumer electronics retailer, the risk is not the current rate but the possibility that categories currently exempt are reclassified into scope during a period when component costs are already elevated.
The broader trade environment has stayed volatile through August. Fifty percent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods took effect on August 22 after talks collapsed, and customs processes for low-value imports continue to tighten ahead of new electronic entry requirements in the autumn.
Low-value import rules have also tightened through the year. The de minimis exemption that once allowed shipments under $800 to enter the United States duty free has been suspended, and postal entry requirements have been rebuilt around prepaid duties and new electronic filing processes taking effect in the autumn.
Those changes matter less to Best Buy than to cross-border marketplaces, because a large-format US retailer does not move goods through postal channels. They matter competitively, however, by raising the landed cost of the direct-from-Asia electronics accessories that undercut store pricing.
Best Buy’s exposure to these specific measures is limited by its domestic sourcing structure and its narrow importer of record footprint. The relevance is indirect: trade policy shapes vendor costs, and vendor costs eventually shape the terms Best Buy negotiates.
How this print fits the wider reporting season
Best Buy arrives near the end of a reporting cycle that has already reset expectations for US retail. The consistent theme has been that headline results were supported by non-operating items while underlying demand stayed selective.
Cross-border commerce results have told a parallel story. The same week’s international reporting calendar included the Chinese discount marketplace operator behind Temu, examined in our preview of PDD Holdings reporting second quarter results on August 24, where customs and de minimis changes have reshaped the economics of low-value parcel flows.
Best Buy’s read-through works differently. It is a domestic omnichannel operator whose fortunes depend on device replacement cycles, carrier economics and component pricing rather than on cross-border parcel rules.
The cost structure adds a second layer. With domestic online revenue running near 31.7% of domestic sales and stable, Best Buy is not currently absorbing the fulfilment cost inflation that comes with a rapidly shifting channel mix. Stores continue to serve as fulfilment and service nodes rather than as pure sales floors.
Capital spending of roughly $750m for the full year is modest against a revenue base above $41bn. That restraint gives management room to protect earnings if the component cost cycle extends, but it also limits the scope for the kind of automation investment that peers have used to offset labour costs.
That makes it a relatively clean signal on US discretionary electronics demand. Stripped of refund noise, the comparable sales figure and the category commentary describe what American households are actually willing to spend on technology at higher prices.
What to watch in the release and on the call
Several specific disclosures will carry more information than the headline beat or miss.
- Blended average selling prices: whether memory costs have pushed enterprise ASPs higher, reversing the first quarter position that duties did not lift blended ASPs.
- Unit versus dollar comps in computing: the split between price and volume determines whether growth is healthy or purely inflationary.
- Full-year guidance treatment: a hold on the $6.30 to $6.60 adjusted EPS range implies confidence in a strong holiday quarter despite forecast volume declines.
- Gross margin rate: whether vendor funding and services mix offset component cost inflation.
- Domestic online penetration: whether the roughly 31.7% share moves, and what that implies for fulfilment costs.
- Tariff refund quantification: any figure Best Buy attaches to recoveries, and whether it repeats the commitment to pass value to customers.
- Holiday commentary: early signals on promotional planning and inventory positioning for a higher-priced device season.
The market reaction will likely hinge on guidance rather than on the quarter itself. Best Buy has guided conservatively and beaten in recent quarters, so a beat against the roughly 1% comparable sales bar would not by itself be surprising.
The more consequential question is whether management can credibly reaffirm a back-half margin expansion in the face of a component cost cycle that industry forecasters do not expect to resolve before 2028.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly does Best Buy report Q2 fiscal 2027 results?
Best Buy is scheduled to release second quarter fiscal 2027 results before the US market opens on Thursday, August 27, 2026, with a management conference call the same morning. The quarter covers the 13 weeks ending in early August 2026.
What are analysts expecting?
Consensus data compiled by MarketBeat points to approximately $9.56bn in enterprise revenue and $1.37 in adjusted diluted earnings per share. Best Buy’s own guidance called for comparable sales growth of roughly 1% and an operating income rate of about 3.9%.
How did Best Buy perform in the previous quarter?
In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, ended May 2, 2026, enterprise revenue was $8,936m with comparable sales up 2.0%. GAAP diluted EPS was $1.31 and adjusted diluted EPS was $1.28, with an adjusted operating income rate of 4.1%.
Why are memory prices affecting Best Buy?
DRAM and storage prices have risen sharply through 2026 as artificial intelligence datacenter demand absorbed supply. Because computing, mobile and gaming hardware make up a large share of Best Buy’s assortment, higher component costs feed directly into the prices of the products it sells.
How much tariff refund money will Best Buy receive?
Best Buy has indicated the amounts are small relative to overall sales, because it is the importer of record for only about 2% to 3% of what it sells. Most duty obligations, and therefore most refund claims, sit with its vendors rather than with the retailer.
Is Best Buy raising prices because of tariffs?
On the first quarter call, CEO Corie Barry said duties affected parts of the assortment but did not result in overall average selling price increases at the blended enterprise level. Any average selling price increase this quarter is more likely to reflect memory and storage costs than trade duties.
Why is the second quarter comparison harder than the first?
The prior-year second quarter included a major gaming console launch that management sized at roughly $200m of revenue. Lapping that launch turns gaming from a growth contributor into a drag without any change in underlying demand.
What would cause Best Buy to change its full-year guidance?
The full-year outlook of $41.2bn to $42.1bn in revenue and $6.30 to $6.60 in adjusted EPS assumes margin rate expansion in the back half. A material deterioration in device unit volumes, or an inability to offset component costs through vendor funding and services mix, would put that range under pressure.
How does Best Buy compare with peers this earnings season?
Walmart, Target and Lowe’s all disclosed quantified tariff refund benefits that supported reported earnings. Best Buy has no comparable one-off item, so its result depends more directly on operating execution, category mix and gross margin management.