NEW YORK — Customers snapping up electronics and gift cards for the holidays boosted Best Buy's third-quarter profit, but the nation's largest electronics retailer said yesterday that shoppers are focused on prices, particularly of TVs and computers.

Best Buy predicted consumers will stay that way in the fourth quarter, squeezing its profit margin. Still, Best Buy Inc. raised its annual profit and revenue forecasts and said both traffic and average spending rose from a year ago.

Sales at Best Buy stores that have been open at least one year — a key retail measure — rose more than 10 percent Thanksgiving weekend, CEO Brian Dunn said in a conference call with analysts.

GE'S FOCUSING ON ENERGY, HEALTH CARE

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt said yesterday the giant conglomerate is undergoing a renewal after what has been one of the most difficult years in the company's 117-year history.

Immelt said in his annual outlook session for analysts in New York that GE is focusing on sectors such as energy and health care as it looks to its big industrial divisions to navigate out of the deep recession. It also plans to rely much less on its lending arm, GE Capital, for profits next year.

Yet despite the shift in strategy, GE's forecast for 2010 shows that the effects of the recent economic crisis will linger.

ADOBE POSTS LOSS, BUT DEMAND IS UP

NEW YORK — Adobe Systems Inc. said yesterday that although it took a loss in the fiscal fourth quarter, consumer demand improved and allowed the maker of design and desktop publishing software to post an optimistic outlook for the current period.

Adobe reported a net loss of $32 million, or 6 cents per share, for the three months that ended Nov. 27, compared with a profit of $245.9 million, or 46 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

EXPANDED USE OF CRESTOR ENDORSED

GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Federal health advisers said yesterday that expanded use of AstraZeneca's cholesterol pill Crestor can benefit patients with healthy cholesterol levels by preventing heart attack, stroke and death.

A Food and Drug Administration panel of experts voted 12-4 with one abstention that Crestor's benefits outweigh its risks in patients with normal cholesterol and no history of heart disease, setting the stage for a dramatic expansion of a drug that is already a blockbuster.

The FDA is not required to follow the group's advice, though it usually does.

— Associated Press