Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is looking to mortgage its prized Buybuy Baby brand in its urgent effort to raise financing as sales slump, cash runs low and unpaid vendors withhold shipments, Bloomberg News reported. Company management is in exclusive talks with Sixth Street Partners for a new line of credit of around $375 million, which would be backed by assets including the baby brand, according to people with knowledge of the discussions who asked not to be named because they are private. The loan isn’t final and could change. An exact valuation for Buybuy Baby is hard to pinpoint, especially as its owner’s fortunes fade, but some analyst estimates have put it at $1 billion or more. In a letter in March, the company’s top investor Ryan Cohen projected the brand was worth more than the company’s entire market capitalization, which stands at around $760 million, and said it could even fetch “several billion dollars.” The retailer on a conference call earlier this year to discuss first-quarter results said the Buybuy Baby brand had seen net sales increase by over 20% over the prior year, and projected more than $1.5 billion in sales for the chain by 2023.
