Harman Int'l Industries

Harman Int'l Industries is among the world’s largest Consumer Electronics sector businesses in the world.  Harman Int'l Industries’s employees generate $273.8M in profits on $3.499B of revenue.  Global output in the Consumer Electronics business will likely rise substantially over the next 10 years.  Long-term economic growth may lift all boats, but Harman Int'l Industries is determined to remain a market leader.  Sectoral leadership in the Consumer Electronics segment takes dedication and consistency, but management seeks out-sized growth.

Harman Int'l Industries’s ticker symbol HAR has recently been trading near $116.92 a share.  The Harman Int'l Industries corporate headquarters in Washington DC predicts Consumer Electronics profits will satisfy shareholders in search of risk-appropriate returns.

The significance of market volume is sometimes ignored, but with a total market capitalization of $7.617B ensures sufficient liquidity.  With a beta of 1.91, the company is more volatile than the market as a whole.  When the average equity moves higher, Harman Int'l Industries moves more aggressively.

Best Buy

The mass-market electronics business is a notoriously difficult nut to crack. Aggressive competition from players like Circuit City is only half the battle. Discounters like Wal-Mart and slightly more upscale venues like Target are eager to gain a piece of the market. And when traditional powerhouses like Radio Shack enter the mix, consumers have enormous options and retailers have significant competition.

The entire business model has changed significantly due to all this competition. What once would have been blockbuster models are transformed into loss leaders. Best Buy can't undercut competition from Wal-Mart when Wal-Mart cuts prices on game systems so low that droves of customers literally crush each other in a mad stampede to get the hottest new product.

Yet the rewards for winning the competition for this sector of retail are especially rich. Best Buy can afford to heavily saturate its stores with sales personnel. While Wal-Mart's customers are left to their own devices, customers at Best Buy need to fight past waves of employees just to reach the merchandise. And in a complicated field like electronics, many customers really appreciate this approach.

While competitors like Circuit City have repeatedly disrespected and underpaid their employees, Best Buy has created an employment paradise. And consumers ultimately benefit.