bed bath and beyond on wednesday reported a surprising holidayquarter loss as the company ran low on inventory and struggled to move merchandise out of congested ports and onto shelves ceo mark tritton said outofstock merchandise caused the company to miss out on about 175 million in fiscal fourthquarter sales thats higher than the prior quarter when supply chain bottlenecks cost the company about 100 million tritton said in a cnbc interview that the home goods retailer is disappointed by its results he said major headwinds in the macro environment have slowed the companys turnaround efforts for instance he said moving goods costs more and some bestselling items from national brands are in short supply due to missing components like microchips that go into vacuums plus he said the majority of its seasonal merchandise got stuck at ports and arrived late he said some of those challenges have carried into the current quarter still tritton said bed bath is making progress with its transformation he said it is remodeling stores investing in technology welcoming back customers with postcards and targeted emails and expanding its more profitable private label business bed bath has been on a bumpy ride as target veteran tritton has sought to refresh the retailers brand with the launch of private label products store remodels and closures of underperforming locations its stock has been drawn into memestock rallies along with amc entertainment and gamestop it has also been under pressure from investors including activist ryan cohen chairman of gamestop and founder of chewy the retailer recently struck a deal with cohens firm rc ventures by agreeing to add new board members and explore whether it should spin off or sell its buybuy baby business which has been one of its bright spots bed bath on wednesday did not provide a specific forecast but said it expects sales and margins to improve in the second half of the upcoming fiscal year as supply chain conditions ease heres how the retailer did in the threemonth period ended feb 26 compared with what analysts were anticipating based on refinitiv data   loss per share 92 cents vs profit of 3 cents expected the companys net loss grew to 159 million or 179 per share from net income of 9 million or 8 cents a share a year earlier excluding onetime items it lost 92 cents a share analysts surveyed by refinitiv had expected earnings per share of 3 cents sales fell 22 to 205 billion from 262 billion a year earlier that fell short of estimates for 207 billion samestore sales a key retail metric dropped 12 across bed baths business compared with the yearago period samestore sales declined 15 for the bed bath  beyond banner and grew by low singledigits for the buybuy baby banner digital sales declined by 18 compared with the yearago period which partially reflects the shift back to stores and normalizing ecommerce levels tritton said bed bath is doing a complete overhaul of its supply chain so it can better manage all of its merchandise as it imports goods and moves them to distribution centers and stores he said that technology which acts like a virtual control tower will go live at the end of this month those efforts were already underway but have become more urgent he said the timing of these pressures and the timing of the completion of the strategy is the friction point he said along with executing on its turnaround efforts bed bath must compete for shoppers dollars as inflation is at an approximately fourdecade high consumers are also weighing other spending priorities such as summer vacations and spring wardrobes which may direct their attention outside of the home tritton said the backdrop is tougher for the retailer especially since households no longer have extra dollars from the government like child tax credits that is dampening the overall demand for several categories including home he said we think theres an evergreen strong home market that has had some erratic ups and downs and when it normalizes we think theres a great business to be had he said were part of customers lives and their wants and needs and to ensure that were in stock and servicing that need is our key agenda as of tuesdays close bed baths shares are up about 23 so far this year the retailers stock closed at 1797 on tuesday down 675 bringing its market value to 173 billion