Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said Friday it was closing an additional 87 of its flagship stores and its entire Harmon chain of drugstores, as the retailer struggles to find financial support to keep its operations funded, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The latest closings are in addition to a plan announced in August to shut 150 lower-performing Bed Bath & Beyond locations, a spokeswoman said. The company said Friday it is also closing five of its Buybuy Baby stores. The company had about 50 Harmon stores as of February 2022. The company, which is expected to file for bankruptcy soon, faces limited options to reorganize as a going concern. Its lenders have cut off credit, it hasn’t secured a buyer to acquire its business, it is struggling to raise financing to survive chapter 11 even in shrunken form and many vendors have stopped shipping goods to the retailer. Discussions are continuing and a financing deal could still materialize. On Thursday, Bed Bath & Beyond said it received a default notice from JPMorgan Chase & Co., after it overdrew on its credit lines. If it doesn’t gain access to financing, the retailer might need to close all or most of its stores. Read more.
In related news, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s slide toward a potential bankruptcy filing threatens to flood the retail real-estate market with hundreds of vacant stores after the company said last week it would close about 90 additional locations, the Wall Street Journal reported. But landlords who own big-box space occupied by the troubled home-goods retailer are more confident about finding new tenants than they would have been in years past, according to property owners and retail analysts. One of the bigger Bed Bath & Beyond landlords has received commitments from tenants to fill all 12 locations if and when they close, according to a person familiar with the matter, including Sephora, Trader Joe’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., T.J. Maxx, Ross Stores Inc. and HomeGoods. After years of shrinking their real-estate footprints, big-box retailers such as bookseller Barnes & Noble and discount-clothing store Burlington have shown signs of expanding again. Demand for larger retail spaces is particularly strong in the Sunbelt region, where the population has grown significantly over the last decade but very little new retail has been built since the 2008 financial crisis, said Chuck McShane, director of market analytics for the Carolinas at CoStar Group Inc. Read more. (Subscription required.)
