Ryan Cohen Says Bye-Bye to Bed Bath

He came, he saw, he bought…and now he’s sold.

Carrying through on his announcement earlier this week that he intended to sell his entire stake in troubled Big Box retailer Bed Bath & Beyond, investor Ryan Cohen and his RC Ventures have pulled the trigger and he is out.

A filing released Thursday afternoon following the market close showed Cohen no longer held any shares in the company, selling off his 10% share plus his call options, which he had only secured at the start of the week. CNBC reports that the sales were at prices between $18.68 and $29.21 per share.

It was in early March of this year when filings showed that Cohen, through RC Ventures, had bought his 10% stake, although it wasn’t clear over what period the purchases had been made. On March 1, BBB stock closed at $16.67 but during much of January and February it had traded as low as just under $13. As such, Cohen certainly cleared a profit but it is not known yet how much.

He is the second major shareholder to dump his stock this week in the huge runup of its shares as Bed Bath has been caught up in a Reddit-infused meme feeding frenzy which saw its stock briefly touch $30 a share after teetering in the $5 range during much of July and early August following its disastrous first quarter financial report that resulted in the departure of its CEO and chief merchant.

Investor Jake Freeman, a 20-year-old college student who bought just over 6% of Bed Bath in early July through an entity called Freeman Capital, dumped his entire stake on Tuesday according to company filings. The Financial Times reported he spent $25 million to buy the shares and netted a profit of $110 million when he sold.

Since the news of these sales broke after the market closed on Wednesday, the company’s stock price began to plummet and in after-hours trading on Thursday it stood at just over $12, a 55% drop from its mid-week high.

All of this comes as analysts continue to rate the company poorly and say its stock should be significantly less. Bed Bath executives have said they plan to make an announcement by the end of the month – they originally said it would be in July – to discuss new financing and other details on its ongoing plans to resurrect itself.

For investors like Cohen and Freeman – and apparently many other traders with much smaller stakes – that would be a day late and many dollars short.