Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY) has had a very hard time in the past couple of years. The company's niche within home goods retail has been totally upended by the switch to more focus on e-commerce for consumers and among other issues, it has sent shares plummeting to multi-year lows. BBBY has had rough patches before and I've argued in the past that its balance sheet and willingness to buy back shares were fair reasons to own it but thus far, buyers simply haven't stepped in. After a lackluster Q1 result,BBBY actually showed some relative strength but is at its lows once again. Is it finally time to buy BBBY?
This time last year BBBY shares were still trading in the $60 to $70 range but to be fair, its results were much better. Last year's Q1 comp sales increase was 2.2% but in the most recent quarter, BBBY posted a decline of 50bps. This is an exacerbation of a terrible trend for BBBY's comp sales and given that 2015's results weren't bad - they weren't great either - I think BBBY is going to have a hard time comparing against it. That's a problem not only because it means sales are still weakening - we don't know where the bottom is yet - but it also will make BBBY's comp sales numbers look even worse. That's a big problem and certainly a big reason why shares have been decimated the way they have.
