By Alexander Gladstone
Bed Bath & Beyond shares were eliminated Friday after the company's bankruptcy plan went into effect, marking the end of a speculative frenzy that drew retail investors who defied repeated warnings that the stock would become worthless.
The shares' termination amounts to a coda for Bed Bath & Beyond, the once-ubiquitous home-goods chain that is now in the final stages of being liquidated as a corporate enterprise. The company has been shutting down its stores and selling off its inventory through going-out-of-business sales, with most of the proceeds used to pay back Wall Street firms that lent it money, leaving nothing for shareholders.
Bed Bath & Beyond said in a securities filing Friday that the shares have been canceled and "have no value."
Shareholders who are being wiped out include those who helped Bed Bath & Beyond raise more than $400 million earlier this year through equity offerings when the company was insolvent.
Bed Bath & Beyond signaled at the start of this year that it was considering bankruptcy because of its weak operating performance and considerable financial challenges. But a community of passionate retail investors disregarded the warning and continued to buy shares in the embattled company, expressing their belief in voluminous social-media posts that it would ultimately rebound.
Many of those investors had been excited about GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen's short-lived investment in Bed Bath & Beyond last year, and the memes they posted often centered on theories that Cohen would return to save the company.
Sensing that investor enthusiasm could create a capital-raising opportunity, Bed Bath & Beyond entered into a deal with hedge fund Hudson Bay Capital Management, in which it sold shares to the fund at a discount and then Hudson Bay turned around and sold them into the market.
Retail investors purchased at least $360 million in Bed Bath & Beyond shares through Hudson Bay. They bought at least another $48 million even after Bed Bath & Beyond scrapped the Hudson Bay deal and pivoted to selling shares through the investment bank B. Riley Securities, while stating in securities filings that the shares would be worthless if the company filed for bankruptcy.
While the stock closed at $5.86 on Feb. 6, the day that Bed Bath & Beyond closed the deal with Hudson Bay, it slowly sank to pennies over the subsequent weeks as a result of the dilution caused by issuing hundreds of millions of new shares.
Retail investors continued to buy shares after Bed Bath & Beyond filed for chapter 11 in April, listing a gaping hole in its financials -- assets of $4.4 billion and liabilities of $5.2 billion.
They kept buying the shares even after the stock was delisted by Nasdaq and shifted to over-the-counter exchanges. They kept buying them after the company released its bankruptcy plan that said that the shares "shall be canceled, released, and extinguished."
All along, Bed Bath & Beyond-focused social media threads on Reddit and X, formerly known as Twitter, pulsated with memes and posts by bullish investors expressing their conviction that a miracle was nigh and the company stood to be rescued.
On Friday, 8.6 million shares changed hands, closing at 7 cents a share for a market capitalization of $55 million.
Write to Alexander Gladstone at alexander.gladstone@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 29, 2023 17:22 ET (21:22 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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