Overstock.com shares spike after company announces website rebrand

Shares of Overstock.com rocketed 19% higher on Thursday, a day after the e-commerce home goods retailer announced it would change its website’s name to Bed Bath & Beyond after buying up the fallen retailer’s intellectual property and digital assets via a bankruptcy auction.

Shares were trading north of $30 per share midday, giving Overstock a market valuation of roughly $1.3 billion.

Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson said the Overstock name reflected the company’s prior liquidation-based model and didn’t align with the type of products it now sells.

“We started out 20-plus years ago as a liquidator and became a general merchandiser. Now we’re a home furnishings and furniture company and there was a lot of headwinds with the name Overstock, headwinds with customers who were confused who we were and what we were selling, headwinds with suppliers that didn’t want to necessarily sell if it was associated with liquidation,” Johnson told CNBC’s “The Exchange.”

Bed Bath & Beyond maintains strong brand awareness, Johnson said, despite mismanagement and eventual bankruptcy.

The brands already share overlapping customers, Johnson said, which will help to ease the transition.

“We’ll do this transition slowly where the Overstock customer will come to the new website and will recognize it but so will the Bed Bath and Beyond customer. And then over time we’ll sunset out the Overstock feel,” he added.

Johnson said shoppers can expect Bed Bath & Beyond’s famed coupons to live on, at least during a transitional period, but noted on a call with analysts earlier Thursday that the company will not offer as many or as deep discounts over the long term.

“One thing that Bed Bath & Beyond customers will realize is that our non-coupon price is really good. And I think people will be very surprised with the deals that Overstock and now Bed Bath and Beyond is able to offer and has been offered,” he said.

The new Bed Bath & Beyond website is set to be relaunched in Canada within the next week, with a subsequent rollout of a website, mobile app and loyalty program in the U.S. expected in the coming weeks.

Overstock shares are up more than 50% so far this year.