Barnes & Noble Closing Two Offices, Outsourcing Some Nook Services

Barnes & Noble Inc. said it's closing its Santa Clara, CA and Taiwan offices and outsourcing some of its Nook technology services to Bahwan CyberTech, a software products and services company. The offices will be closed and the services, which includes cloud management and development support for the e-reader, will be turned over by July 2016. The move is expected to result in about $8 million in expense reduction savings and about $5 million in capital expenditure reductions. The company expects to report severance charges of about $6 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2017. Barnes & Noble stock closed down 3.1% on Thursday. Shares are up 34.1% for the year so far, but down 21.4% for the past year.