Thursday, March 30th, has been a tense day for Bed Bath & Beyond as the company initiated a $300 million stock offering and warned that it may, should the offering fail, be forced to file for bankruptcy. The news caused an immediate price collapse in the price of the firm’s stock, and BBBY ended the day more than 26% in the red.

BBBY Falls More Than 26% After Again Warning of Possible Bankruptcy

This Thursday, the beleaguered Bed Bath & Beyond announced a “Hail Mary” stock offering—the second in two months—worth $300 million. The offering is reportedly the last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy and the company explained it is partially fueled by the fact that the loans it had secured last year have been downsized.

The announcement had a dramatic effect on BBBY’s shares. Soon after it was made, their price dropped sharply and continued declining until the end of the trading day. By the market’s close, the shares were down 26.23% and stood at $0.59. In the after-hours, they somewhat stabilized and were even up 1.7% by the time of writing.

Bed Bath & Beyond has continued its decline into 2023, and it had sounded the alarm of a possible bankruptcy already in early January. The company also made a stock offering worth $1 billion in early February in what was widely considered its final attempt to stay afloat. As a result of the hardships, it was reported last week that Bed Bath & Beyond was closing hundreds of stores across the US.

BBBY’s Year-Long Decline

While BBBY never reached the highs of other popular “meme stocks”—AMC and GME—it did see a significant rise during the short squeeze craze. However, since then, the company has been in a determined, near-ceaseless decline and has failed to leverage popularity with retail investors in the way GameStop and AMC have.

The fall was temporarily halted, and even reversed, between March and August 2022. In the spring, it was revealed that the famous activist investor bought a significant stake in the company. The upward trend was, however, challenged by the late summer as the rumor that Cohen is exiting his position started circulation. The shares halved soon after as the rumor was proven correct.

Since then. BBBY’s decline has been very steady. One of its recent earnings reports showed very bad results in the third quarter of 2022 with net sales dropping about 33%. Despite the company’s attempts to stay afloat, it has warned of bankruptcy multiple times over the past few months and its shares are down nearly 75% since the start of the year.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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