5-minute presentation training

You Can Present Your Work.
Just Follow a Formula.

(hopefully they're charts)

The Five-Step Formula

Every chart on this page uses the same delivery sequence. Memorize these five steps and you won't worry about what to say next. The formula applies to most visuals an analyst would create and present.

  1. Explain the horizontal axis.
  2. Explain the vertical axis.
  3. Walk through the legend or groups.
  4. Put one number into a sentence.
  5. Share the takeaway.

Before the case · Why the formula matters

Bad example

You can't present every chart. If a chart is too busy the creator didn't spend enough time on it.

Bed Bath & Beyond — Everything We Could Possibly Measure

Too many metrics · too many scales · no single number · no clear takeaway

$12B $10B $8B $6B $4B $2B +10% 0% −10% −20% −30% −40% Tritton hired Owned Brands Coupon pulled Buyback done Net sales Comp sales Owned-brand % Cash Store count Inventory Buybacks coupon cut traffic falls? brands swapped private label in is this cash? or buybacks? FY19 Q1 Q3 FY21 Q1 Q3 FY22 Q1 Q4 Legend: net sales, comparable sales, owned-brand share, cash, store count, inventory, buybacks, margin, peers, events, and management actions

This chart resembles the same Bed Bath & Beyond story, but it is not ready to present. Sales, comparable sales, cash, store count, and owned-brand share are all crammed onto two axes with competing annotations, and there is no single number the audience can hold onto.

Do not judge your presentation ability by a slide like this. No one can present it clearly because the slide does not give the presenter a path. We are going to tell the same story in a simpler manner: one chart, one number, one takeaway at a time.

Practice Case · Bed Bath & Beyond 2019–2023

The story we will use for practice

To practice the formula, we need a story with real charts and a clear narrative. We will use Bed Bath & Beyond from 2019 to 2023.

For decades, customers were trained to shop Bed Bath & Beyond one way: come for the national brands, wander the stacked-to-the-ceiling aisles, and never pay full price because of the famous 20%-off blue coupon. In late 2019 the company hired Mark Tritton, the merchant behind Target's private labels, to fix the business. His plan replaced national brands with the company's own private-label "Owned Brands," thinned out the cluttered aisles, and pulled back the coupon.

Tritton was not just changing the products. He was asking customers to use the store in a way the brand had never trained them to. People did not drive to Bed Bath & Beyond for a private label. They came for the brands they already trusted and for the coupon that made the trip worth it. Take those away at the same time and you are betting a new customer will appear to replace the old one. While that bet was running, the company spent about a billion dollars buying back its own stock — money it would soon need.

The new customer never showed up. Tritton was ousted after about two and a half years, and Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy and liquidated in 2023. The four charts below give us enough story to practice with. The chart type changes. The delivery method does not.

Chart 1 of 4 · Bar chart

Slide takeaway

Bed Bath & Beyond's sales fell from $11.2 billion to $5.3 billion — the business cut in half in three years.

Bed Bath & Beyond — Annual Net Sales

Fiscal year · USD billions · FY2019–FY2022

$12B $9B $6B $3B $0 $11.2B FY2019 $9.2B FY2020 turnaround begins $7.9B FY2021 $5.3B FY2022 $5.8B gone in 3 years

Source: Bed Bath & Beyond 10-K filings and earnings releases. Dark bar = the established model. Red bars = the turnaround years under Mark Tritton.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years, from 2019 through 2022. Bed Bath & Beyond's fiscal year ends in late February, so fiscal 2019 runs through February of 2020."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have annual net sales, in billions of dollars."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each bar is one fiscal year. The dark bar is the last year of the old model. The red bars are the turnaround years, after the company started replacing national brands and pulling back the coupon."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In fiscal 2022, net sales were $5.34 billion, down from $11.16 billion in fiscal 2019 — less than half the business in three years."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that sales fell every year of the turnaround. There was no point where the new model started adding customers back."

Notice the order

The presenter does not start with the whole business story. They follow the same five-part order every time: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. And if the number matters, put it on the slide so the audience does not have to do the math.

Chart 2 of 4 · Slope chart

Slide takeaway

Every home retailer's existing stores grew or held. Only Bed Bath & Beyond's collapsed.

Comparable Sales — Bed Bath & Beyond vs. Peers

Full-year comparable sales % change · FY2020 vs. FY2022

+15% 0% −15% −30% FY2020 FY2022 Target +2.2% +19.3% Williams-Sonoma +6.5% +17% −3% Bed Bath & Beyond −27%

Source: company filings. Bed Bath & Beyond's full-year figures are approximate; peers are reported comparable sales or comparable brand revenue. A slope chart shows direction between two points, not the path in between.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have two points in time: fiscal 2020 on the left, and fiscal 2022 on the right. We are comparing where each company started and where it ended."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have comparable sales — the percentage change in sales at stores and channels that were already open a year earlier, so a new store opening doesn't flatter the number. Above the zero line is growth; below it is decline."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each line is one retailer. Follow it from its starting point on the left to its ending point on the right. The two grey lines are Target and Williams-Sonoma. The red line that drops below zero is Bed Bath & Beyond."
  4. Put one number in sentence "By fiscal 2022, Bed Bath & Beyond's comparable sales were down about 27%, while Target still grew 2.2% and Williams-Sonoma grew 6.5%."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the home category was fine. The customers were still spending — just not at Bed Bath & Beyond. The problem was the store, not the market."

Chart 3 of 4 · Waterfall chart

Slide takeaway

Management spent about a billion dollars buying its own stock while the business burned the rest.

Bed Bath & Beyond — Where the Cash Went

Cash and equivalents · USD millions · FY2020 year-end to FY2022 year-end

$1.5B $1.0B $0.5B $0 $1.4B Cash FY2020 −$1.0B Buybacks −$0.3B Burn & other $0.1B Cash FY2022

Source: Bed Bath & Beyond 10-K balance sheets and capital-allocation disclosures. The starting cash ($1.4B) and ending cash ($108M) are reported; the middle "burn & other" bar is the balancing residual that nets two years of operating losses, store investment, and other flows so the bridge ties out — it is not a single reported line.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have steps, left to right: the cash we started with, then the things that drained it, then the cash we ended with."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have cash and equivalents, in millions of dollars — the money the company actually had on hand."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "The first and last bars sit on the floor; those are the starting and ending cash totals. The red bars in the middle float, and each one hangs down from the running total to show money leaving. We start at the top left and step down to where we land. The first red bar is share buybacks — cash the company used to buy its own shares back from investors instead of keeping it."
  4. Put one number in sentence "About $1.0 billion went to buying back stock, and over the same stretch cash fell from roughly $1.4 billion to about $108 million."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the cushion that could have funded the turnaround was handed to shareholders right before the company needed it to survive."

Chart 4 of 4 · Table

Slide takeaway

Over three years, every peer stayed positive while Bed Bath & Beyond fell every single year.

Comparable Sales Growth — Peer Comparison

Full-year % change vs. prior year · columns = fiscal years · rows = retailers

Retailer FY2020 FY2021 FY2022
Bed Bath & Beyond −3% −12% −27%
Williams-Sonoma +17% +22% +6.5%
Target +19.3% +12.7% +2.2%

Source: company annual reports filed with the SEC. Each cell is that retailer's reported full-year comparable sales or comparable brand revenue. Definitions differ slightly, and Bed Bath & Beyond's full-year figures are approximate, but the directional contrast is clear.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "Across the top, we have fiscal years: 2020, 2021, and 2022."
  2. Explain vertical axis "Down the left side, we have the retailers: Bed Bath & Beyond, Williams-Sonoma, and Target."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each cell is one retailer's full-year comparable sales growth in that year. Blue-shaded cells are positive. Red-shaded cells are negative."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In fiscal 2022 — the highlighted column — Bed Bath & Beyond fell about 27%, while Target grew 2.2% and Williams-Sonoma grew 6.5%."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that Bed Bath & Beyond's decline was company-specific. Over the same three years, every peer was positive every single year."

What you just practiced

The chart type changed. The approach to presenting them didn't.

The lesson: do not make the audience decode the chart alone. A bar chart, a slope chart, a waterfall, and a table all read the same way: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. The chart type tells you what to draw. The formula tells you what to say.