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New Destruction of Sears continues...
Bloomberg:

Sears Holdings Corp. agreed to sell its Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for about $900 million, marking Chief Executive Officer Edward Lampert’s third move in the last two weeks to prop up the beleaguered retailer with fresh sources of funding.

Under terms of the deal, Stanley will pay $525 million at closing and $250 million after three years, the companies said in a statement Thursday. The buyer also will make annual payments on new Craftsman sales for 15 years. Separately, Sears announced plans to shutter 150 unprofitable stores in a bid to streamline the chain.

With Sears’s department-store business continuing to bleed cash, Lampert has turned to selling and spinning off assets to keep the company operating. The hedge fund manager, who’s also the retailer’s chairman and largest investor, agreed earlier this week to lend the company $500 million and said last month that affiliates of his firm would offer it a $200 million line of credit. Sears also has been reviewing its DieHard batteries and Kenmore appliance brand for potential sales.

[...]

For Sears, the sale is the latest in a long string of moves designed to generate cash for the ailing retail business. The Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based company raised $2.5 billion in 2015 by forming a real estate investment trust that bought more than 250 of its properties.

And more property sales may be coming. This week’s $500 million loan was secured by the company’s real estate in anticipation that a future sale of some properties could help pay back the debt.

It’s also been closing poor-performing locations, an effort it continued with Thursday’s announcement. The company said it will shut 109 Kmart and 41 Sears stores, and it reiterated its intention to squeeze more money out of its real estate.

Lampert also previously spun off the Sears Hometown & Outlet business and Lands’ End clothing line.

Still, challenges remain. The company needs to raise a total of roughly $1.5 billion to make it through 2017 comfortably, Christina Boni, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, has estimated.


He's destroyed Lands' End too. (I bought a few dress shirts a few months ago - several of them had some sort of large blue "drip" stain on the fabric which never should have made it through QC...)

Heck of a job, Lampert!

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who is kinda surprised it's held on this long, given his incompetence.)
New Re: Heck of a job, Lampert!
Amen on that! And in case you don't know, he and Jim Cramer were office mates at Goldman Sachs when they were younger.

On Cramer's recommendation I owned some Sears Holdings stock about 10 years ago. I paid about $170/share at the time. After a while, I got out with a modest loss. The stock is barely over $10/share now.

Clearly Lambert may be on some kind of ego trip, but has no idea of how to run a business.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
     Destruction of Sears continues... - (Another Scott) - (1)
         Re: Heck of a job, Lampert! - (a6l6e6x)

Mmmmmm... gloat cheese!
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