Bed Bath & Bankruptcy? Investors Fear Retailer’s Collapse After Reporting Huge Losses
Bed Bath & Beyond
When Bed Bath & Beyond (BB&B)announced its quarterly losses on Tuesday, they were even lower than the already-dismal expectations by the company, increasing expectations that the retailer is doomed to collapse.The company said on Tuesday it lost $393 million during the third fiscal quarter, which ended on November 26, 2022. That was nearly $8 million more than it had predicted and a 42% increase over its losses for the same period a year prior.CEO Sue Gove said BB&B would cut another $80 to $100 million in costs, including layoffs, across more than 100 stores, having already slashed costs considerably.“Although we moved quickly and effectively to change the assortment and other merchandising and marketing strategies, inventory was constrained and we did not achieve our goals,” Gove said in a news release.Although its stock value trended upward slightly following the news, over the previous year BB&B’s value has collapsed by 84.74% to just $1.98 on Tuesday.The company has struggled to meet its expenses or to finance its $1.2 billion in debt, saying last week it had failed to refinance some of that debt just weeks after announcing it was taking out another loan.In that announcement, on January 5, Gove said the company “has concluded that there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” and that it was exploring “all strategic alternatives … including obtaining relief under the US Bankruptcy Code.”Gove, a former retail executive, was named the company’s CEO in October in the latest attempt by the board to get control over a failed brand makeover.In early 2021, as amateur stock traders began coordinating their purchases of small-time stocks through the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, Bed Bath & Beyond became a favorite buy. Alongside GameStop and other cheap stocks commonly bet against by professional shorters, BB&B’s value became inflated by the amateurs’ holdings, doubling in price in a couple of weeks. However, the boost didn’t last, and after the federal government began cracking down on Robinhood, the stock-trading app used by the amateurs, the inflated stocks’ value began to fall again.
