BNEDBarnes & Noble Education, Inc.
Is it safe?
Mostly sound, with a caveat: comfortable debt (AA), but big price swings.
Rock-solid balance sheet, low leverage. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -100% · now 13% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can BNED take a bad year?
Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. carries $116M of net debt at 1.56× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q1 2027 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 1.56×
Net debt / EBITDA · 0.97× a year ago · the load is going up
- Debt / equity
- 0.44×
Debt / equity
- Annualised volatility
- 68%
Annualised volatility · three times the market's own swing
Details›
- Total debtQ1 2027
- $124M
- Cash and short-term investments
- $7.8M
- Net debt
- $116M
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $74M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $42M
- Debt / equity
- 0.44×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 1.67×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 68%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −100%
- Below its 52-week high
- 13%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.