Microsoft sells Nook stake back to Barnes & Noble

Did Microsoft get buyer’s remorse?

The software giant bought a big stake in Nook from Barnes & Noble in 2012. And now it’s selling it back.

Barnes & Noble had been struggling to get its e-reader on solid footing. While the Nook was well-reviewed, it was a late entrant to the e-reader race and had been plagued by delays. Like the Kindle, it added a tablet to its line, but overall it never made much of a dent in Amazon’s dominance of the field. Barnes & Noble spun the Nook off into its own hardware-and-ebooks unit to try to stanch the bleeding.

Microsoft stepped in with $300 million for a 17.6% stake in Nook. Now it’s stepping out with $62 million and 2.7 million Barnes & Noble shares -- what The Verge calls “a clear loss on Microsoft’s original investment.”

Barnes & Noble revealed the buy-back in an SEC filing Thursday. The Verge asked a Barnes & Noble representative for the reasoning behind it, and was told, “as the respective business strategies of each company evolved, we mutually agreed that it made sense to terminate the agreement.”

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