Barnes & Noble and the DePaul University DePaul Center building in downtown Chicago. (Photo by Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty Images)
CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
As Barnes & Noble’s sale to Elliott Management, owner of UK bookstore chain Waterstones since last summer, moves along, activity around the company’s spun off educational arm has begun to ramp up.
This month, California-based Bay Capital Finance announced that it has attempted to acquire Barnes & Noble Education. BNED, which manages Barnes & Noble College bookstores, the Bartleby digital studying program, and other educational services and products, separated from Barnes & Noble in 2015.
BNED declined Bay Capital’s offers, explaining “that each of the Bay Capital proposals substantially undervalued BNED, were highly conditional and not credible.”
The company cited its “digital transformation” in elaborating upon its value. Notably, BNED’s digital student solutions division saw fiscal 2019 sales increase 35.4% over fiscal 2018. (Retail and wholesale sales decreased in fiscal 2019.)
[“source=forbes”]
