NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- Best Buy (BBY) - Get Report CEO Hubert Joly has enjoyed an extremely successful two-and-a-half year run on Wall Street, boosting the retailer's stock price by making sizable cost cuts, introducing snazzy-looking new "shops within stores," and restoring discipline to what was once a failing operation in danger of losing all relevance.

Now, the former Carlson Wagonlit (CWT) - Get Report exec faces one of Wall Street's age-old questions: What's next?

Early indications are that Wall Street is impatient to know. On Jan. 15, Best Buy reported better-than-expected holiday sales, with domestic same-store sales rising 3.4% compared to earlier guidance for no growth. But in spite of Best Buy's above-plan holiday results and its raised outlook for the fourth quarter, investors focused on comments from Best Buy executives that they were expecting weak growth in the first part of 2015.

Specifically, Best Buy said it expected sales in the first half to either be unchanged or to decline by a low-single digit percentage. Shares of the electronics retailer subsequently fell 14%, the clearest indication yet that investors were beginning to wonder if Joly and his team would to be able to keep propping up profit margins despite pressure from the likes of Target (TGT) - Get Report, Walmart (WMT) - Get Report and of course, Amazon (AMZN) - Get Report.

With Best Buy poised to shed more light on its direction Tuesday morning, and the stock having recovered some 12% since the Jan. 15 plunge, TheStreet dives into two areas that Wall Street wants to hear more about from Joly and Best Buy.

1.Are there more opportunities to cut costs?

Joly has proven to be a magician of sorts, managing to slash costs and expenses without implementing mass store closures in the U.S., Canada or Mexico. Since unveiling his "Renew Blue" turnaround plan in November 2012, Joly has cut costs by a whopping $965 million out of a targeted $1 billion by cutting staff and streamlining operations. That has served several purposes.

First, it has freed up money for Best Buy to redesign and add functionality to its online store, invest in web talent, and develop a formidable ship-from-store program that's now live in some 1,400 U.S. locations.

Second, the in-store shopping experience has been revamped to include eye-catching new mini-shops from Sony (SNE) - Get Report, Samsung, and GoPro (GPRO) - Get Report, while employees -- called "blue shirts" -- have been retrained to enhance their selling tactics.

And, finally, the cost savings have served to offset pressure on gross profit margins amid the company's investments in a new price-matching policy and increased sales of lower-margin products, namely in the gaming and tablet categories, as well as for gadgets bought online.

For the nine months that ended Nov. 1, Best Buy's domestic gross profit margin declined 170 basis points year-on-year to 23%. For its international operations, gross margin dropped 80 basis points during that span to 20.8%

Investors have come to expect significant cost savings to counteract the effects of highly competitive industry conditions on Best Buy. It's in a business where same-store sales gains are hard-won, and margins are thin. However, if Joly does not announce another sizable restructuring program this year as his prior plan nears completion, investors may begin to view the operation with a more critical eye, particularly as regards its pressured gross margins and same-store sales growth being weighted towards the holiday season or around splashy new tech releases.

2.Should Best Buy still be operating in Canada?

In January, Target announced that it was pulling up stakes from Canada, admitting defeat in the notoriously competitive retail landscape north of the border. Now, investors may start to wonder whether Best Buy should do the same, given its financial performance there since opening its first stores there in 2001.

As of the third quarter, Best Buy operated 263 stores in Canada under the Future Shop, Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile banners compared to 267 a year earlier. The retailer does not break out the performance of its Canadian business, but has offered clues that it's struggling. In its third-quarter SEC filing, the company wrote that "the gross profit rate decline of 0.5% of revenue (international segment) was primarily driven by Canada due to a highly competitive promotional environment in tablets and higher revenue in the lower-margin gaming category."

The entire international segment for Best Buy, which in the third quarter also included the Five Star business of 184 stores in China, which was sold in December to Jiayuan Group, produced an operating loss of $63 million vs. an $81 million loss a year earlier.

To reach Joly's ambitious long-term financial forecasts of a 5% to 6% non-GAAP operating margin and 13% to 15% return on invested capital, all indications point to a need to exit Canada soon. For the nine months that ended Nov. 1, Best Buy's non-GAAP operating margin stood at 2.5% while its return on invested capital was 10.4%.

Joly has shown through the sale of Five Star in China that he is willing to lop off lagging businesses, but if Best Buy Canada is not deemed to be on a similar chopping block, investors may react harshly.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.