(Reuters) - Best Buy Co Inc forecast a fall in same-store sales in the current quarter and the next, saying shoppers were spending less on consumer electronics and were waiting to buy new mobile phone models.
Shares of the world's largest consumer electronics chain fell 4 percent in premarket trading on Thursday.
Rising grocery bills and higher fuel costs in the United States are weighing on consumers' ability to spend on discretionary items such as electronic goods.
"We are expecting to see ongoing industry-wide sales declines in many of the consumer electronics categories in which we compete," Chief Financial Officer Sharon McCollam said in a statement.
McCollam also said she expected the demand for mobile phones would stay soft as consumers were waiting for new launches.
Apple Inc is expected to launch the latest iteration of its iPhone in September and Amazon.com Inc is rumored to unveil its first smartphone in September.
Best Buy's sales at stores open for at least 14 months fell 1.9 percent in the first quarter ended May 3 and the company said it expected same-store sales to fall in the low-single digits percentage range in the second and third quarters as well.
Net income attributable to Best Buy was $461 million, or $1.31 per share, in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $81 million, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned 33 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 20 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Total revenue fell 3.3 percent to $9.04 billion, hurt by a 1.3 percent fall in same-store sales in the United States.
Analysts on average had expected same-store sales to fall 0.9 percent, according to research firm Consensus Metrix.
Best Buy's shares fell as low as $24.30 in premarket trading on Thursday. The stock has fallen 36.4 percent this year through Wednesday's close of $25.35 on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel and Savio D'Souza)