Overstock.com's net loss widened in 3rd quarter

Salt Lake-based Overstock.com, which sells excess retail inventory over the Internet, said Friday that its third-quarter net loss widened. President Patrick Byrne apologized to shareholders in Japanese and said the loss was "my bad."

The net loss widened to $14.2 million, or 75 cents a share, from $3 million, or 16 cents, a year earlier, Overstock.com said in a statement. Revenue rose 64 percent to $169.3 million from $103.4 million.

A new payroll and inventory system wasn't ready when planned, causing the company to lose money by tracking orders and performing other customer-service functions by hand, Byrne said. The delay in the system kept it from posting new products. Software projects that were supposed to improve margins and help marketing didn't get finished on time.

"I screwed up," Byrne, 42, said Friday in an interview. "I made mistakes."

Overstock has posted an annual loss every year since it went public in 2002. The company had cash and cash equivalents of $2.58 million, down from $198.7 million at the end of 2004.

Operating expenses more than doubled in the period to $36 million from $16.8 million a year earlier. The company was forecast to have a net loss of 51 cents a share, the average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Shares of Overstock.comrose 36 cents to close at $33.28 Friday on

Nasdaq. The stock has fallen 52 percent year to date.

"He should go home every day and thank the short sellers," said Craig Bibb, an analyst at W.R. Hambrecht + Co. in New York. He has a "buy" rating on Overstock.com and doesn't own any of the company's shares. W.R. Hambrecht has an investment banking relationship with Overstock.com, he said.

This quarter, "I lost $14 million of our money, and I'm sorry about that," Byrne said during a conference call with investors and analysts.

Of 13 analysts tracked by Bloomberg, one recommended buying the stock, eight recommended holding it and four recommended selling.

Analysts are trying to determine how much of Overstock. com's loss is related to adding new software and technology and what may be from inefficient spending, said Frank Gristina, an analyst at Avondale Partners LLC in Nashville, Tenn.

"He's taking some blame here but it seems a little flip," Gristina said in an interview. He has a "market underperform" on Overstock.com and owns no shares of the company, although his firm recently had an investment banking relationship with it.

The press release announcing Overstock.com earnings began with a "Dear Owners" letter from Byrne, which he opened with the Japanese words for "I'm sorry." The Japanese have a long tradition of formal letters of apology in a business situation, he said in an interview.

"Gomen nasai," wrote Byrne, a linguist who doesn't know Japanese though is fluent in Chinese. "Q3 was rough. My bad. I bit off more technology projects than my colleagues could chew."

"And we choked on it," he wrote.

Byrne said he has a duty of explaining to Overstock.com shareholders what is going on in the business, whether good or bad.

"I think of them like a bunch of grandmas, and I think of what I would want my grandma to know if she had invested her life savings in the business," Byrne said.

Overstock.com rushed in getting a new computer system that didn't work properly for months, Byrne said in the interview. Dealing with these issues took priority over other projects that also needed to be completed, he said.

Lars Bader, a portfolio manager at QVT Financial LP, said he ordered a DVD from Overstock.com about a month ago and was delivered an empty box. Overstock.com, which didn't charge him for the order, later told him it had been canceled, Bader said Friday in an e- mail.

He said neither he nor QVT have a position on Overstock.com securities.

Mark Cuban, who became a billionaire in 1999 after Yahoo! Inc. bought the company he co-founded, said earlier this month he is shorting, or betting against, Overstock.com.

"The more they sell, the more they lose," Cuban wrote Friday in an e-mail. "The more projects he tries, the worse he does. If they don't find a new CEO, they might not have a future."

Cuban said he would short the stock more if it wasn't so hard to borrow and expensive to buy puts. Short sales involve stock that a seller borrows in anticipation of making a profit by paying for them after the price drops.

The company filed a lawsuit against Gradient Analytics Inc., hedge fund Rocker Partners and owner David Rocker Aug. 11, alleging the two companies conspired to issue research aimed at pushing down Overstock.com shares. Byrne said during an Aug. 12 conference call there was a larger process to drive the shares down being orchestrated by a "Sith Lord."

The company alleged that Gradient issued negative reports on Overstock.com while working with Rocker, a hedge fund that sold the stock short.

Gradient and Rocker deny the accusations in the civil suit, which was amended with more allegations Oct. 12. In a letter to customers after the suit was filed, Gradient said, "Our opinions are not, and never have been, 'for hire.' "

Byrne said during the call in August there was a much larger process afoot to drive the shares below $10 and into the hands of an unidentified "bottom feeder" as part of a hostile takeover of his company.

"As this went on, I started realizing that there was actually some more orchestration here being provided by what I'm calling here the Sith Lord or the Master Mind," Byrne said during the call. Sith Lords, which include Darth Vader, are the arch-villains in director George Lucas's six "Star Wars" films.

Byrne said in the interview he suspects hedge funds have hired private detectives to try to penetrate Overstock.com and get inside information, then cheat by trading or front-running this information before it is made public. He said he believes they have approached company employees, often masquerading as someone such as a headhunter.

In the letter, Byrne said some will criticize him for pursuing a "jihad." Some people have said he is on a three-year jihad against Wall Street, he said in an interview.

"There are folks who are destroying companies and destroying the reputations of companies for profit," Byrne said. "It's not cool, and somebody's got to shine a spotlight on it."

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has questioned three former Gradient employees about the claims their company conspired with Rocker Partners.

The company earlier this week replaced Byrne as chairman with his 72-year-old father, John Byrne, who previously was vice chairman of the company and recently retired as chairman of White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd. Patrick Byrne remains president.

"I don't think there's another CEO that gives the public a detailed account as to what's going on in the business as what I do," Patrick Byrne said in the interview.

Contributing: Andrew Dunn; Scott Soshnick; Karen Gullo; Demian McLean

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