Bed Bath & Beyond Q1 Profit Misses Street, Stock Down 5%

(RTTNews) - Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., (BBBY) on Wednesday reported a decline in first-quarter profit as expenses continued to weigh down the bottom line while sales remained flat. The home goods retailer's earnings and sales for the quarter fell short of Wall Street expectations, sending its shares down by five percent in the after-hours trading.

Union, New Jersey-based Bed Bath & Beyond's first-quarter profit dropped to $122.6 million or $0.80 per share from $158.5 million or $0.93 per share last year. On average, 23 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.86 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Sales for the first quarter remained flat year-over-year at $2.74 billion. Twenty analysts had a consensus sales estimate of $2.78 billion for the quarter.

Comparable sales in the first quarter decreased by about 0.5 percent, compared with an increase of around 2.2 percent in the prior year period.

Bed Bath & Beyond has been battling with weak margins. The company's selling and administrative expenses increased to $810.6 million from $770.9 million last year, while sales costs rose to $1.71 billion from $1.69 billion last year.

The company declared a quarterly dividend of $.125 per share, to be paid on October 18, 2016 to shareholders of record as of September 16, 2016.

Bed Bath & Beyond expects fiscal 2016 earnings per share to be "comfortably within the $4.50 to just over $5.00 range that it has earned over the past several years." Analysts currently estimate earnings of $4.99 per share for the year.

BBBY closed Wednesday's trading at $43.18, down $0.15 or 0.35%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further dropped $2.36 or 5.47% in the after-hours trade.