Of course, basing your business solely on people wanting to spend an absurd amount of money on your products during covid and then a period of high inflation had nothing to do with it, right? Nor a failed business model. I mean, come on folks, it's BATHROOM stuff. Tile, a tub or shower, a toilet, a sink and a vanity. Towel bars. Toilet paper dispenser. Once you buy that stuff, are you really going to keep running back to that place for more? Unless their stuff is so cheap it wears out every other year (like particle board cabinets in a high humidity area?) Please. It was a flawed business model long before this happened. Their sales were sliding before covid. They should have cut their retail stores and gone totally online. While I don't have firm statistics, folks at best might remodel a bathroom every ten to 15 years as wear and tear takes its toll (mine is coming soon, but we redid ours way back in 1995 and it lasted thru 5 kids and two inlaws. Now it needs a full rehab, but that's 30 years and everything is still functional. Not pretty, but functional. Most folks will redo a bathroom when they buy a house if it's needed, along with going thru the kitchen. Then it waits for the kids to get grown and leave the house, THEN you redo the kitchen and bath one last time. Or you let new owners do it, since they'll want their own touch in those places anyway. You can't base a business on a declining customer base that might redo their bathroom even once every FIVE years, which I have yet to see proven. I walked into one of their stores once, looked at the prices, laughed like a maniac and went over to Menards and got some woodworking tools. Built my own cabinets out of REAL wood, not particle board. OAK. All I have to do is sand that down and re-stain it. Maybe put a new countertop down. Won't be replacing the fiberglass tub and shower, but might re-gelcoat it. New floor, of course and paint. That's about it. Oh and maybe a new sink/faucets
"Chevron (CVX) recently announced plans to repurchase $75 billion worth of its stock with windfall record profits that came from high oil prices." You don't make a Profit on High Oil Prices unless you are obviously charging much higher prices than the actual costs of producing or buying oil. But we now know that Fuel prices have been Artificially inflated for Profit... good going, Chevron for sharing this info. Something is rotten in Denmark if many businesses are failing to make a sizeable profit due to rising costs in fuel, logistics, and energy but for Oil companies like Chevron... so who is overseeing this inexcusable gauging? Gavis Newsom said he was going to investigate high price of fuel and fuel price gouging at the pump in California, but as we see, it is all talk -- perhaps because (I'm assuming) he is likely a party to the scam.
BB and Beyonds mistake was the CEO they hired who stated he was restructuring the comppany and no more 20% coupons that lasted forever and then reduced inventory and raised prices. Does that sound like a successful business model? only if goiong out of business is your intention. I loved that store until he came along and ruined it. Who hired that guy? Fire the Board of Directors. They are useless and caused this. BBB used to be such a great store. I used them over Amazon all the time. They put themselves out of business.
Why was BBBY buying its own stock? Because it had to provide a return to its shareholders, even at the risk of longer-term detriment. Why use such a tactic? Because it had almost no revenue growth from 2013 to 2018, followed by sharp declines since. BBBY went bankrupt because it lost its relevance with consumers. I am sure it made strategic moves to improve revenue and profitability, but thy were obviously unsuccessful. The stock buybacks contributed but were not a root cause, as the article was intent on conveying.
I found things that I was looking for at other places after not finding what I wanted at BB&B. We were looking for specific things but found them elsewhere like the syrup container we like to use and the type of waffle maker we wanted (four pieces, squared). I figured that I would find the wine glasses there, but they only have these massive things that are over 2x bigger than what we use. Towels and wash clothes were the only thing we actually bought there, but could never find the bath mats we wanted there.
the brilliance of corporate management at work. just think how much money they made in bonuses and salary increases. to do what bankrupt a company. then again this is not the first company to go bankrupt for managements brilliance. remember Twinkies and business heads complain that the union was the cause of the bankruptcy - while the amount owing could have been covered by the corporate officers' bonuses. they refused to give up.
Bed Bath and Beyond's reason for going out of business forever (and enough is enough with these stories) is that they never had any of the advertised sales items, they were overpriced, understaffed and rude. They had coupons which were never valid, any return was a nightmare that a customer never wanted to repeat and much like some businesses today, they acted like they were going the customer a favor by acknowledging them.
Let's see: identical brands and things there costing twice+ in price than Amazon, years ago making the walls of the store bear insane amounts of inventory (inventory costs must have been out of this world) and calling it a "display", low inventory turns, got rid of the kitschy coupons that people used to at least get close to Amazon pricing, stores 3x the size they needed to be- this is just for starters
A company that failed to adjust as people's habits changed, and executives made some bad decisions. Sadly, so many workers who had nothing to do with those poor decisions will now be loosing their jobs. Anyone want to bet the executives have continued to get bonuses each year? And will get more before the doors close? No doubt trolls are blaming Biden or Dems just to make their quotas.
Companies can often face market pressure to do share repurchases, especially from activist shareholders. -- Restate correctly. POOR management teams can face pressure to artificially prop up share prices or be fired when the activists vote in their own management team. There would have been no pressure if not for the bad decision after bad decision the company management made.
"Activist investors" are the next level of corporate raiders. They think they know the best way to run a business, but either never have, or in the case of BBB, run a corp in an entirely different market. (In this case Chewy's CEO who runs a pet food company based soley on internet sales, not a brick-and-mortar home goods company) Look at Kohl's dealing with the same issue.
like most big corps they put finance and traders in charge instead of retail experts. The only thing their leadership knew how to do was play money games and play manipulative stock games, plus a few cost cuttings. did BBB offer a store credit card? that's a very common move by these finance players; turn your retail or service business into a bank.
What really killed this company is that it took on massive debt for a leveraged buyout. This has been one of the dangerous business models ever conceived. A company takes on more debt than it can ever payoff and handle if business slows down meanwhile the corporate raiders (that spew DEI/ESG left and right) make easy billions.
SIGH. I am betting that there are several MBA's that made a lot of money while the company went under. Instead of running a business, MBA's are lining their own pocket. For years now, the Business School Mantra is "Damn the employees, to hell with the customers! Full profits ahead! Where's my bonus check?"
The short story is management took out loans to buy back stock to get the stock price higher or to prevent it from falling further in order to save their jobs rather than to improve the company and its financial performance. This is also a failure of the board of directors who authorized all this to happen.