Hottest Earnings Growth

Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sears and others are benefiting from the demise of Circuit City, but hhgregg is the relatively new — and growing — kid on the block.

Over the last decade, hhgregg has added stores at a rate of about 18 percent annually. It now has 111 units, en route to an announced goal of 400. An economy that has forced many larger rivals to falter or fade has created “a window of opportunity so big you don’t see that many of them in a lifetime,” says Dennis May, who takes the reins as hhgregg’s CEO this month.

Domino’s appears on the hot earnings growth list primarily as the result of what happened in 2007. Operating income didn’t change much between the two years, but interest expenses — which come right off the bottom line — declined from $130.4 million in 2007 to $114.9 million last year. In addition, two years ago there was a one-time charge of $13.3 million for a premium paid to bondholders in the company’s tender offer for senior subordinated notes due in 2011. Domino’s had no extraordinary deductions last year, so the bottom line looked much fatter.