Bed Bath & Beyond Q4 Profit Down, But Tops View

(RTTNews) - Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., (BBBY) on Wednesday reported a decline in fourth-quarter profit as expenses continued to weigh down the bottom line, despite sales increase. Nevertheless, the home goods retailer's earnings and sales for the quarter trumped Wall Street expectations.

Union, New Jersey-based Bed Bath & Beyond's fourth-quarter profit dropped to $303.5 million or $1.91 per share from $321.1 million or $1.80 per share last year. On average, 23 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $1.81 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. On a per share, basis earnings increased due to lower number of shares. Sales for the quarter grew 2.4 percent to $3.42 billion from $3.34 billion last year. Twenty-one analysts had a consensus sales estimate of $3.39 billion for the quarter.

Comparable sales in the fourth quarter increased by about 1.7 percent compared with an increase of 3.7 percent in last year.

Bed Bath & Beyond has been battling with weak margins. The company's selling and administrative expenses increased to $821.3 million from $793.7 million last year, while sales costs rose to $2.10 billion from $2.01 billion last year.

The company's board authorized a quarterly dividend program, and declared an initial quarterly dividend of $0.125 per share, to be paid on July 19 to shareholders of record as of June 17.

CEO Steven Temares said, "We reported fiscal 2015 net earnings per diluted share of $5.10 including a $.06 net benefit for certain non-recurring items. Excluding this net benefit, we were at $5.04, which marks the fourth year in a row that we have been in this four-and-a-half to just over five dollar range since we entered a heavy investment phase several years ago, and we believe we can again achieve earnings per share at the high end of this range this year and, in the event our comp is higher than the 1% to 2% range we're modeling, exceed it."

BBBY closed Wednesday's trading at $48.81, down $0.25 or 0.51%, on the Nasdaq. The stock, however, rose $1.99 or 4.49% in the after-hours trading.