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Flawed Companies You Should Avoid At All Cost
There’s one way to make investing a little bit easier.
Invest in what you know.
That’s the advice investing legend Peter Lynch gave in his famous book, One Up On Wall Street.
Lynch managed the famous Fidelity Magellan mutual fund from 1977-1990.
He managed to compound capital at over 29% per year for 23 years — easily beating the market.
Invest in what you know — easy.
But there’s a certain type of company that I’d recommend everyone avoid investing in:
Companies who rely on discounts to attract customers.
One example is Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY).
(Long time Mighty readers know BBBY is one of our favorite whipping boys. We’ve recommended several shorting opportunities on BBBY back in 2019. All of them turned out profitable.)
Our guess is you already know BBBY fits into this category well. You likely get 2-3 coupons every week from them. Better yet, you know they’re still usable even after their expiration date.
Yes, Bed Bath & Beyond has great stuff. Yes, coupons are one of the most effective ways in converting potential buyers into actual buyers.
But what they’ve done is condition you to expect the coupons. To only shop there if you have one on hand.
This is great for you the consumer. But horrible from a business standpoint.
Discounts reduce a company’s gross profit margins. Bed Bath & Beyond has effectively locked themselves into a lower margin business by conditioning consumers to wait for the coupons.
No coupons = no shopping.
You can see BBBY is down 93% from its highs back in 2015.
The pandemic created a quick surge in BBBY’s business as everyone was forced to stay home. People found a new need for kitchen appliances. Families used their savings to redecorate or renovate their homes. And so on.
It also became a “meme-stock” like GameStop and AMC — sending shares up more than 21x from peak to trough.
But in reality, the business fundamentals never changed.
It’s been a flawed business model from the start.
BBBY hired retail genius Mark Tritton from Target back in 2019 to turn things around. Here’s the October 2019 press release:
“Tritton has over 30 years of experience in the retail industry, including most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer at Target, where he was instrumental in transforming the omni-channel shopping experience. He has end-to-end retail industry experience in merchandising, design, manufacturing, marketing and distribution at some of the world's leading iconic retailers and brands. In addition to Target, this includes Nordstrom, Inc., Timberland LLC and Nike, Inc.”
Tritton was supposed to be the savior. BBBY shares were up 21% the day of the announcement.
However, he was fired in June — less than 3 years later — because he couldn’t get the job done.
Results have been horrible. Sales are down 30% over the past two years… despite the biggest retail and home boom the country has ever seen.
If a guy like Tritton can’t get the job done, who can?
We’re not sure. But we know the troubles at Bed Bath & Beyond are self-inflicted. And an investment you should avoid making.
Investing in what you know is generally great advice. But you’ll also want to avoid companies who have conditioned their customers to only buy at a discount.
Good investing,
Lance
P.S. Next week we’ll cover another type of company you should avoid investing in at all costs: Companies who sell things at a loss and try to make it up on volume.