NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, reminds investors that class actions have been commenced on behalf of stockholders of Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY), Dingdong (Cayman) Ltd. (NYSE: DDL), Stitch Fix, Inc. (NASDAQ: SFIX), and Coupang, Inc. (NYSE: CPNG). Stockholders have until the deadlines below to petition the court to serve as lead plaintiff. Additional information about each case can be found at the link provided.
Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY)
Class Period: March 25, 2022 – August 18, 2022
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: October 24, 2022
On March 6, 2022, through his investment firm RC Ventures LLC, Ryan Cohen, the billionaire co-founder of Chewy Inc. who also serves as chairman of GameStop Corp., sent a letter to Bed Bath & Beyond’s board which announced that he owned a 9.8% stake in Bed Bath & Beyond and in which he criticized the Company’s management.
On this news Bed Bath & Beyond stock to closed 34% higher on March 7, 2022 compared to its close on March 4, 2022, the previous trading day, on extremely heavy trading volume.
On March 25, 2022, Bed Bath & Beyond added three new directors appointed by Ryan Cohen’s investment firm, RC Ventures LLC.
On August 15, 2022, Ryan Cohen, through his investment firm RC Ventures LLC, announced in an SEC filing purchases of over one million January 2023 call options with exercise prices at $60, $75, and $80—significantly higher than Bed Bath & Beyond shares were trading.
On this news, Bed Bath & Beyond stock closed 29% higher on August 16, 2022 compared to its close on August 15, 2022, on extremely heavy trading volume.
Then, on August 18, 2022, Ryan Cohen, through his investment firm RC Ventures LLC, announced that he would sell his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond. Also on August 18, 2022, Bloomberg published an article entitled “Bed Bath & Beyond Taps Kirkland & Ellis for Help Addressing Debt Load” which revealed the Company hired a law firm for help with its debt.
On this news, Bed Bath & Beyond shares fell $4.53 per share, or 19%, to close at $18.55 per share on August 18, 2022, on extremely heavy trading volume. Bed Bath & Beyond shares continued to drop on August 19, 2022, falling $7.52 per share, or 40%, from its August 18, 2022 close, to close at $11.03 per share, on extremely heavy trading volume.
On August 19, 2022, Bed Bath & Beyond stock plunged to a new low of $9.68, dropping another 52.6% from the previous day.
Bed Bath & Beyond’s stock price continued to decline over the next two trading days, falling an additional 16.23% to close at $9.24 per share on August 22, 2022, and falling another 4.98% to close at $8.78 on August 23, 2022, dropping over 70% from August 17’s high price of $30 per share in five trading days after Defendants dumped their shares.
Insiders profited at least $110 million from their Insider sales from August 16 to August 17, 2022.
For more information on the Bed Bath & Beyond class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/BBBY
Dingdong (Cayman) Ltd. (NYSE: DDL)
Class Period: Pursuant to the Company’s June 29, 2021 IPO
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: October 24, 2022
Dingdong purports to be a leading and the fastest growing on-demand e-commerce company in China. Dingdong conducted its IPO in New York, and its ADS are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) under the ticker symbol “DDL.”
In June 2021, as part of Dingdong’s IPO, Defendants issued approximately 4.07 million ADS to the investing public at $23.50 per ADS, all pursuant to the Registration Statement.
According to the Registration Statement, Dingdong’s mission is to “make fresh groceries as available as running water to ever household.” To achieve this end, Dingdong has purportedly “embraced a user-centric philosophy” that is committed to “directly providing users and householders… fresh produce, mean and seafood and other daily necessities through a convenient and excellent shopping experience supported by an extensive self-operated frontline fulfillment grid [emphasis added].” Critically, Dingdong differentiates itself from its competitors by claiming to “procure… products primarily form direct upstream sources such as farms and cooperatives,” “apply stringent quality control across [its] entire supply chain to ensure product quality to [its] users,” and rely on its “frontline fulfillment grid and robust, digitalized fulfillment capabilities… [to] deliver… orders within 30 minutes [emphasis added].”
Unbeknownst to prospective investors, however, the Registration Statement misrepresented Dingdong’s commitment to ensuring the safety and quality of the food it distributes to the market. In fact, Dingdong was actively flouting its food safety responsibilities, selling, for example, dead fish to customers while marketing it as live fish and recycling vegetables that were past their sell-by date. In other words, Dingdong was no better at providing or assuring access to “fresh” groceries than the supermarkets, traditional Chinese wet markets, or traditional e-commerce platforms it repeatedly claimed to be displacing. The foregoing conduct subjected Dingdong to increased risk of regulatory and/or governmental scrutiny and enforcement, all of which, once revealed, were likely to (and did) negatively impact Dingdong’s business, operations, and reputation. By omitting these facts, ADS purchasers were unable to adequately assess the value of the shares offered in connection with the IPO, and thus purchased their ADS without material information and to their detriment.
According to the Complaint, the Company’s public statements throughout the IPO period were false and materially misleading. When the market learned the truth about Dingdong, investors suffered damages.
For more information on the Dingdong class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/DDL
Stitch Fix, Inc. (NASDAQ: SFIX)
Class Period: December 8, 2020 – March 8, 2022
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: October 25, 2022
Stitch Fix sells a range of apparel, shoes, and accessories through its website and mobile application. Traditionally, Stitch Fix sold products as a "Fix," through which the customer would receive a monthly box of items chosen by a personal stylist. The customer would not know specifically which items they were receiving but would have the option to return whichever items it did not want. The customer paid a $20 "styling fee" per Fix, and that fee would be applied to any of the items the customer chose to buy.
Prior to the Class Period, in 2019, Stitch Fix announced a new direct-buy retail component, eventually named "Freestyle." The Freestyle program allowed customers to shop the site for specific products, giving the customer more control over what items they received, but also removing the curation element that differentiated Stitch Fix from other e-retailers. The Freestyle program was first made available to a subset of existing Stitch Fix customers in 2020, and incrementally rolled out to all existing customers in early 2021. In September 2021, the Freestyle program was formally launched to new customers.
On December 7, 2021, Stitch Fix announced a loss for its first quarter of 2022, cut its full-year revenue projections, and admitted, for the first time, that, as a result of the "expansion into Freestyle," the Company "may experience short-term impacts of cannibalization." As a result of these disclosures, Stitch Fix's share price declined by $5.97 per share, or 24%, from a closing price of $24.97 per share on December 7, 2021, to a closing price of $19.00 per share on December 8, 2021. However, Stitch Fix continued to assure investors that this was a short-term problem.
Then, on March 8, 2022, when Stitch Fix reported earnings for its second quarter of 2022, the Company offered a weak outlook for its third quarter of 2022 and cut its guidance for the full year. Stitch Fix attributed the guidance cut to "friction" between the Freestyle and Fix businesses.
As a result of this disclosure, the price of Stitch Fix stock declined by $0.67 per share, or 6%, from $11.01 per share to $10.34 per share.
The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, Stitch Fix made numerous false and misleading statements to investors concerning the synergy between the Company's Fix and Freestyle programs, and repeatedly denied claims that the Freestyle program could cannibalize the Company's legacy Fix business. Specifically, Stitch Fix repeatedly assured investors that the Company's Freestyle business was "an additive experience" and "complimentary" to the Fix business, that "the combination of those two things will allow us to address many more types of clients," and that "we see solid growth in both sides of the business." In truth, throughout the Class Period, Stitch Fix concealed the fact that these programs were not complementary or additive. Stitch Fix knew that the Freestyle program would be much preferred to the Company's original Fix model, and that the Freestyle program would inevitably cannibalize the Company's legacy Fix business. As a result of these misrepresentations and omissions, Stitch Fix's Class A common stock traded at artificially inflated prices during the Class Period.
For more information on the Missfresh class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/SFIX
Coupang, Inc. (NYSE: CPNG)
Class Period: Pursuant to the Company’s March 11, 2021 IPO
Lead Plaintiff Deadline: October 25, 2022
On or around March 11, 2021, Coupang conducted its initial public offering (“IPO”), and the company sold 130 million shares for $35.00.
Coupang reported that its annual Total Revenue rose from $11.96 billion in 2020 to over $18.4 billion in 2021, and that its Net Loss increased from $474.89 million in 2020 to over $1.54 billion in 2021.
Since the IPO, Coupang shares have declined to as low as $10.51 per share on June 13, 2022.
The lawsuit focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by making false and/or misleading statements and/or failing to disclose that: (1) Coupang was engaged in improper anti-competitive practices with its suppliers and other third parties in violation of applicable regulations, including (a) pressuring suppliers to raise prices of products on competing e-commerce platforms to ensure Coupang’s prices would be more competitive; (b) coercing suppliers into purchasing advertisements that would benefit Coupang financially; (c) forcing suppliers to shoulder all expenses from sales promotions; and (d) requesting wholesale rebates from suppliers without specifying any terms relating to rebate programs, all of which served to artificially maintain Coupang’s lower prices and artificially inflate Coupang’s historical revenues and market share; (2) Coupang had improperly adjusted search algorithms and manipulated product reviews on its marketplace platform to prioritize its own private-label branded products over those of other sellers and merchants, to the detriment of consumers, merchants, and suppliers; (3) unbeknownst to its Rocket WOW members, Coupang was selling products to non-member customers at lower prices than those offered to its Rocket WOW members; (4) Coupang subjected its workforce to extreme, unsafe, and unhealthy working conditions; (5) all of the above illicit practices exposed Coupang to a heightened , but undisclosed, risk of reputational and regulatory scrutiny that would harm Coupang’s critical relationships with consumers, merchants, suppliers, and the workforce; and (6) Coupang’s lower prices, historical revenues, competitive advantages, and growing market share were the result of systemic, improper, unethical, and/or illegal practices, and, thus, unsustainable.
For more information on the Coupang class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/CPNG
About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.
Contact Information:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.
Brandon Walker, Esq.
Melissa Fortunato, Esq.
(212) 355-4648
investigations@bespc.com
www.bespc.com
