Bed Bath & Beyond Is Junk

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Bed Bath & Beyond Is Junk

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Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY), the barely surviving retailer, jumped 70% Tuesday. GameStop Chair Ryan Cohen’s RC Ventures bought out-of-the-money call options. As board chair of GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME | GME Price Prediction), his judgment can hardly hold much value, as that specialty retailer is another deeply troubled company.
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The rise in Bed Bath & Beyond’s shares stands as another example of traders without any sense piling into a stock. Many will lose most of their investment. No one appears to understand that a few people make money as the stock value skyrockets. Many more take a beating on the way down.
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Bed Bath & Beyond fired its CEO-savior, Mark Tritton, and replaced him with board member Sue Grove. The company is in such bad shape it will not find a highly qualified executive to take the job full time. Bed Bath & Beyond is on life support and will not come off it.

In the most recently reported quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond’s comparable store sales dropped 23% year over year. Revenue declined 25% to $1.5 billion. The net loss was $358 million. The $107 million on the balance sheet raises the question of whether Bed Bath & Beyond can survive financially for more than a few months.
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The Wall Street Journal pointed out that “The sharp rise in shares came despite a number of analysts’ warnings about dwindling liquidity at the retailer, which is fighting to maintain the confidence of suppliers and investors after a push into private-label brands that didn’t resonate with consumers.”
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The movement in Bed Bath & Beyond fits the old description of a sucker rally. Smart investors take advantage of novices or those with poor judgment. Bed Bath & Beyond’s shares have no realistic support for their current price. Many investors are about to get burned.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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