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Barnes & Noble Buys Out Internet Partner

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 July 2003, 06:00 CDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) will buy back Bertelsmann AG's stake in Barnes & Noble.com, its online sales venture, for $164 million.

In a press release Tuesday, the New York bookseller said it will acquire all of Bertelsmann's stake in a combination of cash and notes, equivalent to $2.80 a share or LLC membership unit.

Shares of Barnes & Noble.com closed Tuesday at $2.04, down 4 cents.

The transaction, which is subject to customary conditions, is expected to close within 45 days.

Barnes & Noble said it expects the transaction to reduce earnings by about 11 cents a share for the fiscal year. The company in May had backed full-year consolidated earnings guidance of $1.87 to $1.95 a share.

Barnes & Noble.com "remains on track" to have positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the fourth quarter of this year, Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble's chairman, said in a statement.

In September 2002, Bertelsmann, the German media giant, announced it planned to exit all media e-commerce businesses and focus on its worldwide book and music clubs.

Barnes & Noble sold half of the online venture to Bertelsmann in 1998 for $200 million. The venture went public in May 1999.

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