Like with many of its retail peers, home-based care and aging services has become a key area of focus for Best Buy (NYSE: BBY).
These peers include heavy hitters like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT). Together, these companies exemplify the ways that retail has begun to gain a foothold in health care, home-based care and aging services.
Best Buy gave an update on its broader health care segment performance during its second quarter earnings call Tuesday.
“Our consumer health business, where we curate health and wellness products online and in our stores, is largely experiencing similar revenue trends as our core category,” Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said.
For context, Best Buy’s domestic revenue of $9.57 billion decreased 13.1% compared to last year. This was mostly driven by a comparable sales decline of 12.7%.
“I am incredibly proud of our teams as they continue to rise to the challenges of the past few years and I remain impressed with their ability to lead through the rapidly shifting business environment,” Barry said.
Still, the company saw strong growth and new signups for its active aging business, which offers health and safety solutions that aid older adults in their efforts to age in place. Compared to the previous year, revenue for this business slightly spiked.
Best Buy also views the momentum the company gained in the virtual care business as a positive.
“We are very focused on successfully implementing the large U.S. health system accounts that have been won recently, including NYU Langone Health for hospital at home and Mount Sinai Health Systems for chronic disease management,” Barry said. “We are also making progress leveraging our Best Buy capabilities in this space. Our Geek Squad team successfully completed additional health training in Q2 and launched a new Geek Squad pilot service with Geisinger Health.”
Even with this progress, Barry was quick to note that the current revenue contribution from virtual care is still relatively small, and that it would take time before ROI materializes.
“[The] health industry has a longer return on investment,” she said.
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