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This is a serious poll.
On the plus side, B&N has no long-term debt. Although, they have $2B in lease commitments which is effectively the same as long-term debt. If they close a store, they will get hit with a closure expense....among others.
On the negative side, their normalized return on invested capital is mid single digits, which is below their cost of capital. This means that it is better to invest somewhere else than in B&N. Shareholders are better off getting dividends instead of reinvesting.
The biggest negative is that B&N makes its money by selling objects that are being digitized at an increasingly fast pace. I don't really see much synergy between the big box physical locations and the Nook. In fact, it seems that if the Nook really takes off that it would actually spell B&N's doom faster. ironically. These are large stores with high fixed cost that need a large amount of volume.
Think newspapers, magazines, Borders Books, and Blockbuster Video. The storm will catch B&N in my opinion.
B&N has very high operating leverage and makes small margins. This means that if their business declines slightly, the losses will be magnified.
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