Best Buy lays off a few dozen corporate employees

Best Buy has laid off a few dozen corporate employees in recent weeks, the Richfield-based electronics retailer confirmed Monday.

"We've had some areas where we have done a small amount of restructuring," Jeff Shelman, a company spokesman, told the Star Tribune.

He did not provide an exact number of job cuts. But he noted that Best Buy is also hiring in other strategic areas. Its corporate website lists about 90 job openings in Richfield.

Still, the reductions come after a difficult holiday season for the retailer, which had been making strides in the last couple of years to stabilize its business under Chief Executive Hubert Joly.

Best Buy will report its fourth-quarter results on Thursday. It said last month that same-store sales dropped 1.4 percent during the nine-week holiday period partly because of slower smartphone sales. That is a weakness that is expected to continue in the first part of this year.

The electronics behemoth, which continues to face fierce pressure from online retailers such as Amazon, declined to disclose how many corporate employees currently work at its Richfield headquarters.

The campus was designed for as many as 7,500 people but, at its peak, had about 5,000.

In 2012, Best Buy laid off 400 corporate employees. After Joly took the reins of Best Buy later that year, the company cut another 400 corporate jobs in February 2013 as part of a $1 billion Renew Blue cost-cutting program. Last year, the company said it would cut another $400 million over the next three years as part of a second phase of that program, but it said then that the savings would not come from layoffs.

These most recent layoffs have come in the beginning of the Best Buy's new fiscal year.

Kavita Kumar • 612-673-4113