, Columnists
Bed Bath & Beyond Is Buyout Bait
Its prospects are shaky, but it's cheap enough to attract private equity.
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Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.'s perpetual discounts, in coupon form, are so well-known that they regularly make it into comedy bits. But few investors are laughing -- the retailer's shares recently fell to their lowest level since 2000, hurt partly by all this price-cutting.
At just $2.8 billion in market value, or less than $20 per share, Bed Bath & Beyond is now noticeably cheap. With an enterprise value of a little less than 4 times forward Ebitda (including existing debt totaling just 1.5 times Ebitda), the company makes an appealing buyout target.