Sales declined substantially for the second straight quarter for Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., BBBY 9.35% the company said, amid continued supply-chain strains the home-goods retailer has faced since last summer.
The company saw sales fall 28% year over year to $1.88 billion in the three months through November, it said Thursday. A year ago, its sales in the period were $2.62 billion.
Comparable sales, a metric that adjusts for changes to store counts and divestitures, were down 7% year over year. Keeping shelves fully stocked during the latest phase of the pandemic has been difficult for Bed Bath & Beyond amid persistent transportation and logistical challenges world-wide.
Chief Executive Mark Tritton said that inventory problems dented sales by about $100 million in the quarter. Aside from the same-store-sales decline, store closures and divestments from peripheral brands have also eroded sales.
Bed Bath & Beyond posted a loss of $2.78 a share, a slide from its loss of 61 cents a share a year ago.
Stripping out one-time items such as tax and restructuring effects, the company’s adjusted loss was 25 cents a share. Wall Street analysts had been forecasting an adjusted profit of 1 cent a share on sales of $1.95 billion.
Bed Bath & Beyond also lowered its full-year financial forecast. The company said it now expects to post sales of $7.9 billion in the fiscal year, and that its earnings result could vary between breaking even and a 15-cents-a-share loss. In September, Bed Bath & Beyond had said it thought yearly sales would be between $8.1 billion and $8.3 billion, with an adjusted profit of up to 5 cents a share.
Bed Bath & Beyond stock rose more than 9% in premarket trading on Thursday as investors reacted to how the company’s recent performance was tracking to already-reduced expectations based on trends from the summer.
In September, Bed Bath & Beyond tempered investors’ expectations for its rest-of-year performance when it posted a sizable year-over-year sales decline in the summer quarter and lowered its full-year guidance. Supply-chain challenges and less foot traffic in stores had created difficult conditions that the company said were continuing into the third quarter.
The September earnings report sent shares down 22%, and the stock has ceded more ground since then. At $13.37, its price lost 36% during the past 12 months through Wednesday’s close, despite a short-lived run-up in November amid trading from investors interested in meme stocks.
Write to Matt Grossman at [email protected]
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