Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY, $17.65) Q4 earnings tops estimates; but has first ever annual loss

Bed Bath & Beyond reported fiscal fourth quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. But it posted a loss for the full fiscal year.

The home goods retail chain’s adjusted earnings for the quarter came in at $1.20 a share, which surpassed the Street’s estimates of $1.12 a share. Revenue of $3.31 billion fell slightly short of analysts’ expectations of $3.33 billion.

Same-store sales declined -1.4% in the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of a decline around -1.3%.

For the full fiscal year, the company incurred a loss of -$137.2 million, which is its first ever annual loss. Revenue fell -2.6% for the year.

Looking ahead, Bed Bath & Beyond forecasts that its fiscal 2019 earnings would range between $2.11 and $2.20 a share, excluding certain charges. That is higher than the $1.80 a share that analysts polled by FactSet had predicted for the company.

The company has hiked its quarterly dividend to 17 cents a share from 16 cents.

On the other hand, three activist firms - Legion Partners, Macellum and Acora Advisors  - have been wanting to nominate 16 candidates to replace Bed Bath & Beyond’s existing board.

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Sergey Savastiouk|Expert

Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D. has a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow University and has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, investor, manager, and mathematician. His professional expertise is in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, system and pattern analysis, and software and hardware system integration. He has served as the CEO of several hi-tech start-up companies and nonprofit organizations, which has given him proven capabilities in business strategy for high-tech start-up companies, market assessment, company formation, team building, product development, marketing, and sales. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines on related fields. As a retail investor, he spent 15 years developing his proprietary trading and quantitative algorithms (now Tickeron’s A.I.), which brought him significant returns in trading the stock market. His current work and goal in founding Tickeron is to bring professional, sophisticated stock market analysis capabilities to retail investors via an easy-to-use interface.