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BARNES & NOBLE 2015 LETTER TO SHAREHOLDERS
To Our Shareholders:
Barnes & Noble achieved a number of significant strategic, operational and financial
goals in fiscal , strengthening our market positions and building a more dynamic
platform for growth. Each of our business units contributed to our success with
improved performance, reflected by an increase of  in consolidated earnings
before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), including a 
decrease in EBITDA losses in our NOOK® Digital business. We ended the year
with a much improved balance sheet —  million in cash and no borrowings
under our  billion credit facility. Additionally, after our fiscal year ended we
further improved our balance sheet through the conversion of Preferred Shares to
Common Stock, eliminating the associated interest payments.
An important milestone during fiscal  was our acquisition of Microsoft’s
and Pearson’s interests in NOOK Media™. The acquisition allowed us to combine
the Retail and NOOK businesses, which both serve the same consumer market.
By taking advantage of the synergies between these businesses, we expect to
achieve further reduction in NOOK losses going forward. We are streamlining
and consolidating systems and processes that are common to Barnes & Noble.com
and NOOK through our new bn.com e-Commerce platform. The acquisition
also enabled us to separate our Retail and College businesses, forming Barnes &
Noble Education, which we spun off this summer. We believe this will allow each
business to focus on its own growth strategy.
Our Retail Group delivered solid performance, generating EBITDA of  mil-
lion. Our core comparable sales increased . for the year due to our wide range
of merchandising initiatives along with an improving physical book market. Our
merchandizing teams have done an outstanding job of making books, music, gifts
and Toys & Games easier to discover in our stores. In fact, our educational Toys &
Games business delivered  growth this year, on top of a  increase last year.
Post fiscal  the catalog of new titles continues to generate excitement among
our customers. The literary world was energized by the July release of Harper
Lee’s much-anticipated lost work, “Go Set a Watchman,” a companion to her
classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The new book set a record for first-day sales at
Barnes & Noble, surpassing all other adult trade fiction books in our company’s
history, and driving a doubling of sales for “To Kill a Mockingbird” in the weeks
leading up to release. Readers have also been captivated by E.L. James’ “Grey,”
the next installment in her “Fifty Shades” series, and the release of Dr. Seuss’
discovered manuscript, “What Pet Should I Get?”
2 Barnes & Noble, Inc.