Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Bed Bath Moves Into the Beyond

Beyond bloodbath

On Jan. 20, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. had about 117.3 million shares of common stock outstanding; the stock closed that day at $3.35 per share. On March 27, it had about 428.1 million shares outstanding, at $0.7881 each. On April 10, it had 558.7 million shares outstanding, at $0.2961 each. Yesterday, April 23, when it filed for bankruptcy, it had 739,056,836 shares outstanding. The stock closed at $0.2935 on Friday.

So in the last two weeks, Bed Bath & Beyond has sold about 180 million shares to retail investors, more shares than it had outstanding in January. The ...