What happened
It was a wild ride for Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) last month. Shares of the struggling home goods retailer soared through the first half of the month thanks to a short squeeze fueled by traders on Reddit's WallStreetBets and other platforms. However, that rally fell apart in the second half of August when activist investor Ryan Cohen suddenly sold his stake in the company. A strategic update at the end of the month also underwhelmed investors, sending the stock down further.
Nonetheless, the surge in early August was enough to give the meme stock a gain of 89% for the month, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The chart below shows how volatile the stock was over the course of the month.
So what
Bed Bath & Beyond entered August with 103% of its float sold short, meaning short-sellers were so eager to bet on the stock falling that the average share had been sold short more than once.
Much like they did with GameStop and AMC Entertainment, traders on forums like WallStreetBets spotted the high short percentage and low stock price and dove into the stock en masse. Trading volume soared through the first half August, reaching a peak of nearly 400 million on Aug. 16, or roughly $8 billion worth of the stock. With only 77 million shares in the float, that means the average share was traded nearly five times that day. In intraday trading, the stock was up nearly 500% for the month at one point.
However, the following evening, Ryan Cohen, the Chewy co-founder who helped fuel the GameStop boom, filed to sell his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond, and the stock plunged by more than 50% over the next two days.
Meme stock traders put together another short-lived rally at the end of the month as the stock fell sharply on Aug. 31 when the company's highly anticipated strategic update wasn't enough to instill confidence in the turnaround. Management announced a cost-cutting plan that included layoffs and store closures, which would reduce annual overhead expenses by $250 million, and a new round of financing worth more than $500 million, giving it much-needed capital. The company also said that comparable sales declined 26% in the second quarter and it had a free cash flow loss of $325 million, showing the business is a long way from being stable.
Now what
The new round of financing will help keep Bed Bath & Beyond afloat, but it may be too late for the business to be saved. The company will almost certainly burn more than $1 billion in cash this year, and the macroeconomic climate isn't likely to improve anytime soon as Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that interest rates would continue to rise to fight inflation.
While meme stock traders could try to pump up the stock again, the window for the retailer to have a long-term future is narrowing.
