If you only read about bed sales at the retail level and if you have watched recent IPOs up until recently, you might think that the sector was doing very well.  In earnings season we got two different takes and two very different reactions.

Mattress Firm Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: MFRM) is on the retail side and has an arms-dealer model where it can sell any kind of bed to anyone.  It made an acquisition and announced solid earnings and guidance.  Tempur Pedic International Inc. (NYSE: TPX) had a bad earnings reaction and now fears of more problems are there.

Tempur Pedic International Inc. (NYSE: TPX) hit a new 52-week low briefly today but shares have since recovered and are down “only” 14.5% at $48.50 versus a prior 52-week low of $46.53.  The downfall today is on the heels of a research report from Raymond James with the assumption that Tempur-Pedic is aggressively discounting one of its top-sellers.  This stock is now down by more than 40% when its earnings beat but guidance killed the shares in mid-April, but its market value is still $3.07 billion according to Yahoo! Finance.

Mattress Firm Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: MFRM) is pulled down 8% to $35.92 on the day, but it is growing its store sales, growing by an acquisition.  This may just be a gift considering that this 2011 IPO traded as low as $21.03 and above $48.00 at the peak after its IPO.  Its market cap is $1.2 billion.

Another bedding player named Select Comfort Corporation (NASDAQ: SCSS) is down in sympathy too with a 4.7% drop down to $28.15 on Monday.  Select Comfort is worth $1.6 billion in market capitalization.

Sealy Corporation (NYSE: ZZ) is worth only $187 million and its shares are down only 1% at $1.85 on the day.

JON C. OGG