Retail Watchers

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/boston/news ... re-stores/

I must note that amongst my local locations,only Roseville and Town and country village locations are operating normally.Elk Grove though not officially announced for closure has disabled curbside/online pickup which is also the case for more than half of the NorCal locations in general.

Additionally in anticipation of their imminent demise we were instructed in a recent RAD internal memo to remove/destroy/discard all remaining BBB (both parent chain and buy buy baby)gift cards which was fairly easy.Even both before and after the donigan departure, I still wouldn't lump RAD and BBB together in terms of corporate financial health.

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storewanderer wrote: ↑February 7th, 2023, 12:02 am Clearly I have been wrong here. BBB and bankruptcy does not even seem to be on the table. Instead BBB is going to raise $1 billion through a stock sale and completely revive what is left of their company. It it tough to know what is left given how fluid the store closure program is. It is also most curious how they plan to deal with leases on so many dark stores. But they clearly are very smart and have come up with a grand plan to avoid bankruptcy. They will show everyone.

If only Toys R Us had come up with this idea...

Is this for real?

They lose over $4 million a day. Nothing they can do with the stock market will change that. Vendors won't sell them any merchandise. One analyst felt that based on their view of what is left the entire value of the company is ten cents for every share. That probably is a good amount of metal shelves and self checkout machines (if they weren't leased). They also just hired another big executive who specializes in restructurings. Once the executives have drained the last bloody cent and manipulated the stock to whatever extreme benefits them most that will be the end. Only winner here is Chase Bank who gets out from under the recent loan unscathed. I'm sure they won't be back to offer another.

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: ↑February 7th, 2023, 11:39 am https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/boston/news ... re-stores/

I must note that amongst my local locations,only Roseville and Town and country village locations are operating normally.Elk Grove though not officially announced for closure has disabled curbside/online pickup which is also the case for more than half of the NorCal locations in general.

Additionally in anticipation of their imminent demise we were instructed in a recent RAD internal memo to remove/destroy/discard all remaining BBB (both parent chain and buy buy baby)gift cards which was fairly easy.Even both before and after the donigan departure, I still wouldn't lump RAD and BBB together in terms of corporate financial health.

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I agree, Rite Aid isn't nearly as bad off. I did go visit that new store again and there just is not enough merchandise to warrant shopping there. CVS height fixtures with 8 ft of lower fixture leading into every aisle. If they had remodeled any significant number of stores to that format they would have already gone under. They made the CEO change before she had caused too much damage to fix.

Picking through the BB&B website and seeing who is no longer showing in store shopping/pick up/curbside there are more closing that haven't been seen on a public list yet, part of the 150 mentioned above and will leave a tiny fraction of the chain left in SoCal. There are some big additions that really are essential stores for the company to ever have a future.

Looks like South Coast Plaza village (Santa Ana) is closing.
Yorba Linda (busy large format that has year round trailers out back for storage).
Downey (again ultra busy shopping center, if you can't make it there you can't make it anywhere).

But what is more important is trying to figure out what exactly is left assuming nothing else closes. They only have 60 units left in California and many are in various stages of closure.

Orange County will only have two stores left, Seal Beach and Mission Viejo.

Riverside County will only have four stores, La Quinta, Palm Springs, Riverside and Murrieta. I've already commented that Murrieta looks like it closed six months ago but nobody remembered to lock the doors, it does zero sales.

Los Angeles County will only have 6 stores Torrance, Hollywood, Olympic Blvd, Pasadena, Canoga Park, and Studio City.

San Diego County will only have 2, Mission Valley and Oceanside.

The debate about stock and such is really irrelevant, because with such few locations remaining the chain has little more presence than Sears/Kmart a couple of years ago.

The apparent Elk Grove closure has now been confirmed, Roseville and Sacramento Marconi (Town and country)are the last local locations operating as usual.

Vacaville, Folsom, Sacramento, Elk Grove and more Bed Bath & Beyond stores are set to close soon.
https://www.abc10.com/mobile/article/ne ... 60407d10ac

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Again there is no BBB bankruptcy and we were clearly all wrong. They are raising all this cash through curious means and they proved you don't need lenders or banks to rescue your company after you run it into the ground. BBB is making a statement here people should invest in their stock as they are a safe, stable company that has no risk of bankruptcy as they have found strange ways to prevent it.

On a more serious note going forward I wonder how much cash burn per day is... because from how it looks it won't take long to burn through whatever cash they just raised.

How BBB can exist, that is the question. How is it possible to exist with so little inventory anyone wants to buy, stores with skeleton crews due to staffing cuts, vendors that haven't been paid and are owed back money (I assume they want to get caught up on payments before they ship new merchandise).

I received a 20% off any one item postcard in the mail this week too. The exclusions list looked like a newspaper article and too small to read but at least they tried?

The Reno BBB also looks to do no sales at this point. Yesterday late afternoon they had one employee working in the store and zero customers. I don't think they've received inventory in weeks. They've pulled the blue sheets down real low to cover all of the empty shelves. It is really a pathetic state of affairs. They should close the store temporarily until they can get restocked with all of this money they just raised.

With all these stores closing, how are they dealing with the leases that they still need to pay off? At least in bankruptcy, they can walk away from the leases of closed stores. Their lease obligations have to be HUGE.

On a side note, one of the locations closing is in Clackamas, OR. This is a former ToysRUs that they split with part of it becoming a Buy Buy Baby and the rest the a Bed Bath and Beyond. They baby store is remaining but the rest is closing. I imagine they are under a master lease for the entire building.

Meanwhile in Canada:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bed-ba ... -1.6745092

babs wrote: ↑February 10th, 2023, 9:27 am With all these stores closing, how are they dealing with the leases that they still need to pay off? At least in bankruptcy, they can walk away from the leases of closed stores. Their lease obligations have to be HUGE.

On a side note, one of the locations closing is in Clackamas, OR. This is a former ToysRUs that they split with part of it becoming a Buy Buy Baby and the rest the a Bed Bath and Beyond. They baby store is remaining but the rest is closing. I imagine they are under a master lease for the entire building.

We are all raising concerns that the extremely smart management team at BBB has clearly already thought about and overcome. They have determined whatever stock game they had someone play last week about issuing shares would save their company and they don't need any banks or others to assist them to go through a bankruptcy and address issues like this. As I posted earlier this week we were all wrong about this situation and what would happen.

I find it fascinating some folks supposedly threw cash into a company with these lousy understocked stores, tons of lease liabilities, a poor reputation after what has happened the past couple years, but again these people are clearly much smarter than I am and see something I just do not see.

Or last week they were faced with 2 options: stock issuance game, or immediate Chapter 7 filing. I am suspicious no bank would fund a Chapter 11 so that was not an option. In that case I suppose the stock issuance game will allow executives to receive salaries a little longer and maybe find a buyer for Baby.

Bloomberg has an article about the offering that's a good read. Essentially, their banks were ready to force them into Chapter 11 when their advisors crafted this equity plan. The banks were concerned that they would be seen as the villains who pushed BBB into liquidation when there was an alternative on the table.

Not surprisingly, the share price fell. I guess it was a good investment for those who are looking for a tax loss.

Retracted - fell for bad reporting on which Hudson Bay made the purchase.