Bed, Bath and Beyond 2002 Annual Report Download - page 3

WARREN EISENBERG LEONARD FEINSTEIN STEVEN H. TEMARES
Co-Chairman Co-Chairman President & Chief Executive Officer
and Member of the Board of Directors
This past year, we completed our 31st year of operations,
the last 11 as a public company. While our Company has
evolved greatly over this time, the themes of this letter
have not since the core values that have brought us success
through the years have not changed. We remain committed to
the principles on which we were founded, and central to these
is a persistent desire to improve.
In keeping with this principle, to present you with the
portrait of fiscal 2002, we have again combined the Bed Bath
& Beyond Inc. Notice of Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement
with our Annual Report, and we continue to try to find ways to
make our annual presentation to you clearer, more effective, and
more cost efficient. We stated our reasons for doing so last year,
but the point is worth repeating here: we have simplified these
documents because we believe your money is better spent where
it matters most – in the stores, online, and in support of all we
do as merchants.
In that same spirit of clarity and simplification, we want
to share some of the highlights from fiscal 2002 that you will see
in the following pages:
• Net earnings for fiscal 2002 totaled $302.2 million ($1.00 per
share), exceeding fiscal 2001 net earnings of $219.6 million
($.74 per share) by approximately 37.6%.
• Net sales for fiscal 2002 were approximately $3.7 billion,
an increase of approximately 25.2% over the $2.9 billion
in fiscal 2001.
• Comparable store sales for fiscal 2002 increased by approxi-
mately 7.9%, compared with an increase of approximately
7.1% in fiscal 2001.
• During fiscal 2002, we opened 95 new Bed Bath & Beyond
stores, several of which were expected to open in fiscal 2003,
and 2 Harmon stores. We ended the year with 490 Bed Bath
& Beyond stores in 44 states and Puerto Rico, and 29 Harmon
stores in 3 states.
• At the close of fiscal 2002, cash and investments were $764.6
million, compared to $481.4 million at the end of fiscal 2001.
• Shareholders’ equity at year-end was approximately $1.5 billion,
up from $1.1 billion the prior year.
For as long as we have been sending out annual shareholder
letters, we have been speaking about our corporate culture as a
key to our continued growth and success. Each day, over 23,000
dedicated people take the core principle of customer service
and seize the opportunity and empowerment of our decentralized
structure to make us a better Company. Our corporate culture
creates an environment which enables our people to embrace,
act upon, and pass along to new associates the ways of thinking
and of doing things that we have long believed separate us from
others. The financial results that follow in this booklet are a
continuing testimony to the talent and effort of our people.
While we are justifiably proud of the accomplishments
reflected in these pages, we are again mindful of keeping our
work and accomplishments in proper perspective. As of this
writing, our nation continues to face the risks and challenges
presented by our time and our place in history. Many of us at
Bed Bath & Beyond have friends, colleagues or family members
in active military service, meeting the call of our great nation
at this important moment. Our eternal gratitude, thoughts and
prayers are with them, and with all the men and women of our
armed forces.
In this light, we still are very pleased with the results we
report to you here. However, we believe that there is nothing
we do that we cannot do better. We currently plan to open
between 80 and 90 new Bed Bath & Beyond stores in fiscal 2003,
in new and existing markets; as previously noted, several of the
new store openings originally planned for fiscal 2003 were in
fact opened in fiscal 2002. We continue to evaluate ways to
improve our business, including new merchandise items, new
departments, system and process enhancements, and new looks
in fixturing and store design. We also continue to explore new
ways to expand our business and add shareholder value. By
remaining focused on the principles underlying our culture
of customer service, entrepreneurial opportunity, innovation
and execution, we intend to make 2003 another record year.
Again, we thank our associates for their outstanding
effort and performance. In addition, we thank our customers
and business partners for their continuing support and their
contributions in moving us forward.
To Our Fellow Shareholders:
May 2, 2003
BED BATH & BEYOND ANNUAL REPORT 2002
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