Like the other two companies we’ve examined today, Bed Bath & Beyond’s decline is a story of incompetent managers making bad decisions about how to deal with the threat of e-commerce.
The firm has been incredibly slow to build an online presence. It hasn’t done much to build e-commerce capability besides acquiring a few tiny, niche online retailers — like One Kings Lane and Decorist — in the late 2010s.
At several points in the last few years, its founder-directors have also used company funds to bail out underperforming businesses owned by their relatives. This is how Bed Bath & Beyond acquired two of its worst-performing subsidiaries, buybuy Baby and Chef Central.
Today, like the other firms in this article, it has negative earnings, more debt than cash, and a stock price that is likely headed toward zero.
These three companies are among the worst positioned to survive the next recession. But they’re not the only ones that might go belly-up if the economy goes south in the near future.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
