Bed, Bath and Beyond 2003 Annual Report Download - page 3

BED BATH& BEYOND ANNUAL REPORT 2003
1
To Our Fellow Shareholders: Continued from front cover
On the following pages, we discuss some of the highlights from our recently completed fiscal 2003 and provide you with the information
you need in connection with our upcoming Annual Meeting. Before we get to that, we wanted to acknowledge the favorable shareholder
response to our efforts over the last few years in making this annual presentation clearer, more effective, and more cost efficient. We invited
your input last year and we appreciate all the comments we received. With your ongoing support, our efforts to reduce Annual Meeting
expense continue:
• We have taken a further slight reduction in paper weight for this year’s Annual Report, Notice of Annual Meeting and Proxy
Statement, believing that what is on the paper, not the paper itself, is what matters.
• We are urging our shareholders again to vote their proxies by internet or telephone, which saves us mailing expense. Information on
these options appears on page 2.
• We are also repeating our request that shareholders elect to receive future annual reports and proxies by the internet if they are able
to do so. Information on this option also appears on page 2.
Our goal is to present you our annual information in as straightforward and cost efficient a manner as possible.
What we have to tell in these pages is the story of our 33rd year of operations, the last 12 as a public company. As much as the essence of
the story seems to be the same year after year, outstanding financial performance combined with a dynamic and growing organization, we
continue to evolve. This past fiscal year brought us a new Chief Executive Officer, Steven Temares, who as President and Chief Operating
Officer had been responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Company since 1997. It has brought three new, highly talented, independent
members to our Board of Directors, Stanley F. Barshay, Fran Stoller and Jordan Heller, who will be more formally introduced to you in our
Proxy Statement which follows. It has brought into our family the exciting and energetic merchant culture of Christmas Tree Shops: a culture
which, over 30 years, has translated into a store experience that has created a phenomenal level of customer satisfaction and loyalty. We are
thrilled to have the talent and dedication of the Christmas Tree Shops team added to that of our existing Bed Bath & Beyond and Harmon
associates. We believe the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.
The results of our fiscal 2003 have recently placed us, for the first time, in the ranks of the Fortune 500. The significance of this is high-
lighted by the chart of selected financial data which appears on the inside front cover of this booklet, opposite this letter, which details our
growth over our 12 years as a public company. At the end of our first fiscal year as a public company, in February 1993, we had 38 stores and
net earnings were $16.0 million on net sales of $216.4 million.
For comparison, here are some of the highlights from fiscal 2003:
• Net earnings for the year ended February 28, 2004 totaled $399.5 million ($1.31 per share), exceeding fiscal 2002 net earnings of
$302.2 million ($1.00 per share) by approximately 32.2%.
• Net sales for fiscal 2003 were $4.478 billion, an increase of approximately 22.2% from the prior year.
• Comparable store sales for fiscal 2003 increased by approximately 6.3%.
• During fiscal 2003, we opened 85 new Bed Bath & Beyond stores. As you might recall, several stores which were expected to open in
fiscal 2003 were actually opened earlier, as part of the 95 that we opened in fiscal 2002. We also opened one Christmas Tree Shops
store and one Harmon store in fiscal 2003. We ended the year with 575 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in 44 states and Puerto Rico, 30
Harmon stores in 3 states, and 24 Christmas Tree Shops stores in 6 states.
• At the close of fiscal 2003, cash and investments exceeded $1 billion.
• Shareholders’ equity at year-end was approximately $2 billion.
You can see from the chart to the left of this page that we have been reporting growth of this nature for our entire time as a public
company, and each year at this time we credit our culture and say that we are never satisfied. The two are linked. No one ever professes to a
corporate culture of sub-par performance, but in a way ours is something like that: it is an acute awareness of failure, of the many things we
can do better every day. What is it that we have to do better today than yesterday? Everything. The numbers are what they are, and we are
proud of the accomplishments they represent, but we are ever mindful of what we still have left to do. It has to be that way.
So, you see those numbers to the left? If you look at them and are pleased, that is good, because we are pleased with them as well and
enormously appreciative of the efforts of all our associates that went into producing them. If you look at those numbers and see the opportu-
nity for continued growth and improvement, congratulations. You are one of us.
In keeping with this focus forward, here are some of our current thoughts on the coming year. For fiscal 2004, we currently plan to open
new Bed Bath & Beyond, Harmon and Christmas Tree Shops stores. We intend to expand our health and beauty care and fine china initiatives
to additional Bed Bath & Beyond stores. We continue to execute on a multitude of initiatives across the business, from merchandising to
opportunities in systems and technology, all with the view to better our Company. If we maintain our focus on our customer, on fixing our
failures and improving our successes, we should make 2004 another record year.
WARREN EISENBERG LEONARD FEINSTEIN STEVEN H. TEMARES
Co-Chairman Co-Chairman President & Chief Executive Officer
and Member of the Board of Directors
May 28, 2004