Best Buy Sold Fewer Computers at Higher Prices and Comparable Sales Still Rose 4.1%

Read what lifted Best Buy’s quarter before you trust a growth number

Best Buy, the US electronics chain, took $9.8 billion in the 13 weeks to 1 August 2026. Comparable sales rose 4.1% across the company, and 4.5% at home. Its largest category at home, computing and mobile phones, was up 6.8%. Then Best Buy's incoming chief executive said what sat inside computing: "you're looking at ASP increases in the quarter on mid-teens, and then you're seeing unit declines in the high single digits."

Computing sold fewer units for more money. The category it sits in still printed 6.8%. You will never buy memory chips by the container. But a category number is a mix of prices, new products and last year's comparison. That mix hides inside every growth number you are about to trust.

What actually lifted Best Buy's biggest category?

Price, on top of demand Best Buy says is still there. Jason Bonfig becomes Best Buy's chief executive on 1 November 2026. He told the call: "We continue to see memory pricing go up and flow into our assortment in the Q2 time frame." Best Buy's domestic computing and mobile phones comparable sales rose 6.8% in the quarter. Inside that line, computing prices rose mid-teens and computing units fell high single digits. Chief executive Corie Barry put computing's tenth straight positive quarter down to "a combination of customer need to upgrade and replace and product innovation". The phones side of that line ran a sixth straight quarter of growth on expanded carrier partnerships.

Our reading: computing grew on price, not on units. Your revenue does the same thing when a supplier raises a price and you pass it on. It is also the moment the same product quietly becomes a cheaper version of itself, because somebody had to defend a price point.

Where did the extra dollars come from?

Home theater, and the ones Best Buy calls newer and emerging. Barry said home theater "was the second biggest weighted comp driver this quarter, with the highest sales growth since Q2 of fiscal '22", and that Best Buy gained share, with performance broad-based across product tiers and price points. She also named AI glasses, trading cards and health rings, and said sales for that group "more than doubled versus last year". Best Buy's domestic consumer electronics comparable sales rose 5.6% in the quarter, services rose 6.4% and appliances rose 0.2%.

Our reading: a category up 6.8% at Best Buy is not a sign that a product will sell for you. The better question is never whether a category grew, but which half of it grew. Best Buy can answer that, because it prints its categories and then names the drivers inside them. Your research tool prints one line.

Which category fell, and against what?

Entertainment, against a year-ago quarter that rose 39.3%. Best Buy's domestic entertainment comparable sales fell 6.3% in the quarter. Separately, Barry said traditional gaming declined as Best Buy "lapped the successful launch of the Switch 2 in June of last year".

Our reading: the comparison changed before the customer did. Best Buy also says its sales event that runs alongside Prime Day shifted into June this year. If you rode a launch last year, this year's number is about the launch, not about your customer. The fall and the spike are the same fact, read twelve months apart.

Where is Best Buy's new profit coming from?

Other people's stock, and adverts. Best Buy's domestic marketplace ran about $300 million of GMV in the quarter, and Best Buy now expects $1.3 billion of GMV for the full year. Best Buy Ads collected $900 million last year and is on track for 10% growth. Best Buy's domestic gross profit rate rose 60 basis points to 24.0%, which the company puts down to Marketplace, Best Buy Ads and about $34 million of tariff refunds.

Then Bonfig opened a door: "We will begin adding international sellers later this quarter, which opens us up to a materially new group of sellers as previously all sellers needed to have a US physical presence."

That is the one line here you can walk through. A US marketplace that expects $1.3 billion of GMV this year is about to take sellers with no physical presence in the United States at all, later this quarter.

Barry described Best Buy's customer this quarter: "we see a customer who is still spending, but is value focused and attracted to sales moments". Prices rose in computing while units fell, and Best Buy gained share while home theater ran as its second biggest comp driver. So here is the argument worth having with another seller. When your revenue went up this year, was that more people, or the same people paying the price your supplier handed you? Best Buy knows which, because it counts units. Do you?

If you are about to source on somebody else's growth number, ask us to check the China side first.