NEW YORK CITY—Barnes & Noble said Wednesdayit would separate its retail and Nook electronicreader businesses, with an eye toward completing the separation bythe first quarter of calendar 2015. Bloomberg reported Wednesdaythat the move followed years of urging byinvestors and analystsalike.

In view of positive full-year results for fiscal 2014, “Webelieve we are now in a better position to begin in earnest thosesteps necessary to accomplish a separation of NOOK Media and Barnes& Noble Retail,” says Michael P. Huseby,B&N's CEO. “We have determined that these businesses will havethe best chance of optimizing shareholder value if they arecapitalized and operated separately. We fully expect that ourRetail and NOOK Media businesses will continue to have long-term,successful business relationships with each other afterseparation.”

Those full-year results for the year ended May 3 included EBITDAof $251 million, “the highest it's been in four years,” Husebysays. Helping drive the EBITDA growth, however, was a narrowing ofthe FY loss by the Nook platform, from $480.4 million in fiscal2013 to $217.6 million in the most recent fiscal year as itcontinues to compete with Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad. B&Nsaid Wednesday that much of the difference in Nook EBITDA stemmedfrom Nook-related inventory charges of $222 million for the yearprior.