Best Buy a top analyst pick for 2009

Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY), which had dire predictions for its near-future results just recently, will report quarterly results for its Q3 period this morning at 9:00am CT. Although the consumer electronics retailer is in the boat with almost every other retailer in the process of suffering from a large consumer spending slowdown this holiday season, it's still positioned to be one of the long-term winners competing for shopper dollars.

The reason for this is because it now sits atop the consumer electronics world by itself. Fellow retailer Circuit City's Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: CC) Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is causing havoc at that competitor, and the five or six times I've scouted local Circuit City stores this month have turned out to be ghost town visits more than anything. Consumers are apparently staying away from Circuit City stores in drives. On the flip side, the many times I've visited Best Buy stores have seen packed houses. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is not the only retailer doing well this holiday season. Just a guess, anyway.

Thomas Bradley of KeyBanc indicated that Best Buy now has a "virtual national monopoly" in the consumer-electronics sector. He's very correct -- who else competes with Best Buy on a national retailer level? One can argue all day long that companies like Wal-Mart and Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) are competitors, but neither offers the breadth of consumer electronics, the individual selections nor the specialized services Best Buy does. It does consumer electronics and does them very well -- and now it how no national competitor. Once the economy takes an upswing (and it will), Best Buy will have the market cornered, and that could turn out to give the retailer a very good 2009 indeed.