Bed Bath & Beyond: Why would anyone buy this stock?

Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY) reported earnings for the third fiscal quarter on Wednesday after the bell, and I have to admit, I'm puzzled that, at the time of this writing, the stock is seeing a bid. It currently is trading up almost 3% on decent volume.

Here's why I'm puzzled. According to Melly Alazraki's summary, earnings per share declined 36% to $0.34 per share. That was a penny below what analysts were looking for. Okay, maybe the buying is due to the fact that the company only missed by a penny? After all, I myself was expecting much worse, and maybe the market was, too. But then I go to the press release and see that top-line sales were flat and same-store sells fell by 5.6%. Those comps are just terrible. And the cash-flow statement was nothing to write home about, either. You'd have to be pretty damn optimistic to buy Bed Bath & Beyond with the market indexes in the red and with all the miserable economic data that's out there haunting the halls of Wall Street, Main Street, and every other Street you can think of. Plus, with not-so-great news out from Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), I really have to wonder why anyone is stepping up today to purchase BBBY. (Michael Fowlkes does offer a different perspective in his earnings preview, so you may want to check that out.)

Maybe everyone else is right while I am wrong. Who knows. But the stock doesn't pay a dividend, the dire predictions on Christmas sales are coming true, and the Santa rally may officially be over. I don't know, I'd tend to be more bearish on this retailer's earnings data than bullish. It's possible some shorts are cashing out on the news, I suppose. One thing's for certain: I won't be getting into bed with this stock (and, yes, that was an awful pun).

Disclosure: I don't own any stock mentioned, but positions can change without notice.