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Bed Bath & Beyond Surpasses – Analyst Blog

Zacks Market Commentaries — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:01:06 +0000

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (BBBY) recently reported better-than-expected second quarter 2009 results with a low single-digit growth in the top-line and a surprise double-digit rise in the bottom-line.

The company’s quarterly earnings of 52 cents a share surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 48 cents, and jumped 13.0% year on year from 46 cents reported in the prior-year quarter.

Results were favorably impacted by the uptick in sales as well as retailer’s effective cost management, which offset the slump in demand for home furnishings due to slowdown in the housing industry.

Consequently, operating profit climbed by 18.5% to $222 million, whereas operating margin expanded 150 basis points to 11.6%.

The houseware retailer continues to experience growth in the top-line due to the opening of new stores. After increasing 2.8% in the first quarter of 2009, net sales rose 3.3% in the quarter under review to $1,914.9 million from $1,853.9 million posted in the year-earlier quarter.

During the quarter, the company opened – nine Bed Bath & Beyond stores, three buybuy BABY stores and one Harmon Face Values store. The company also closed one Bed Bath & Beyond store.

Comparable store sales fell 0.6% in the second quarter of 2009 compared to 0.1% decline registered in the year ago quarter. However, the rate of decline decelerated from the first quarter of 2009, when comps dipped 1.6%.

Like Bed Bath & Beyond, the company’s peer groups, Williams-Sonoma Inc. (WSM) and Pier 1 Imports Inc. (PIR) have been also hit by the U.S. housing downturn, which has resulted in weak consumer demand for home furnishing items. Moreover, rising unemployment is also making things tough as cash-strapped consumers are prioritizing their purchases.
Read the full analyst report on "BBBY"
Read the full analyst report on "WSM"
Read the full analyst report on "PIR"
Zacks Investment Research

How Many NYSE Stocks Trade Below $1 per Share?

Fred Fuld — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Here's a trivia question for you. How Many NYSE Stocks Trade Below $1 per Share?br /a. zerobr /b. 7br /c. 12br /d. 90br /br /The answer is d. 90. Yes, there are actually 90 New York Stock Exchange stocks that trade for less than a dollar a share. Here are a few examples:br /br /Rite Aid Corp. (RAD) 28 centsbr /Six Flags, Inc. (SIX) 31 centsbr /Pier 1 Imports Inc. (PIR) 32 centsbr /Vonage Holdings Corporation (VG) 41 centsbr /Borders Group, Inc. (BGP) 54 centsbr /Unisys Corp. (UIS) 69 centsbr /Avis Budget Group, Inc. (CAR) 70 centsbr /br /If you like cheap stocks, check out below book high yield stocks and stocks selling below cash per share at a href="http://wsnn.com/"wsnn.com/a. br /br /span style="font-style:italic;"Author does not own any of the above. No recommendation expressed or implied./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;' script type="text/javascript"!-- google_ad_client="ca-pub-2427831169011625"; google_ad_width=300; google_ad_height=250; google_ad_format="300x250_as"; google_ad_type="text"; google_ad_channel ="8681602088"; google_color_border="FFF3DB"; google_color_bg="FFF3DB"; google_color_link="1B0431"; google_color_url="1B0431"; google_color_text="29303B"; //--/script script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" /script /div

Pier 1 Imports (PIR) Insiders put faith and money on the line

Frank Lara — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:30:58 +0000

With so many stocks beat up by the Bear market, you would expect insiders who believe their shares are trading at a discount to buy them outright and show us the way. Pier 1 Imports, Inc. (NYSE:PIR) has been doing just that, the amount of insider activity is either a case of blind faith or true vision.