It's the end of the road for shares of Bed Bath & Beyond

MW It's the end of the road for shares of Bed Bath & Beyond

By James Rogers

Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year

It's the end of the road for shares of bankrupt home goods retailer and sometime meme-stock darling Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.

In a filing Friday, Bed Bath & Beyond $(BBBYQ)$ said that its shares are canceled, and "have no value" as the company's bankruptcy plan takes effect. Bed Bath & Beyond also said that it is undergoing "an orderly wind-down and liquidation process."

Related: More U.S. companies have gone bankrupt in 2023 so far than all of 2022 or 2021

Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy earlier this year came after a troubled few years marked by strategic missteps, cash burn, challenging underlying business trends and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nonetheless, shares of the embattled retailer skyrocketed last year, driven by the Wall Street Bets crowd on Reddit.

Related: Bed Bath & Beyond: from home-goods behemoth to bankruptcy

In a last-gasp bid to stave off bankruptcy, Bed Bath & Beyond announced equity offerings in its final months this year, raising more than $400 million.

But the beleaguered company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April and was subsequently delisted from the Nasdaq exchange. Even with liquidation sales under way at hundreds of stores, the stock continued to attract attention while trading over the counter. Activist investor Ryan Cohen, for example, was still mentioned in social-media chatter about Bed Bath & Beyond despite cashing out his entire stake in the company last year.

Related: Why investors gamble on shares of bankrupt companies -- Bed Bath & Beyond, for example

Trading under the ticker BBBYQ, the stock closed at just under 7.9 cents on Friday after 8.82 million Bed Bath & Beyond shares changed hands. This, however, is a far cry from the company's Nasdaq heyday, when it traded under the ticker BBBY. For many years, Bed Bath & Beyond enjoyed great success by offering name brands at a discount. With a devoted customer base, the company firmly established itself as a household name, and its stock hit an all-time high of $80.82 on Jan. 3, 2014. The stock closed at a record $80.48 on that day, after adjusting for four 2-for-1 stock splits along the way.

In June a judge approved Overstock.com Inc.'s (OSTK) $21.5 million bid to buy Bed Bath & Beyond's assets. Overstock.com completed its rebrand of Bed Bath & Beyond in early September.

See more: Bed Bath & Beyond employees' final days bring chaos, confusion and rude customers: 'It's all a mess'

Shares of Overstock.com ended Friday's session down 0.6%.

Ciara Linnane contributed.

-James Rogers

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 30, 2023 08:58 ET (12:58 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.