You know things are bad when a retailer closes stores before Christmas. Sears is throwing in the towel before the fun and riots of Black Friday arrive. They’ve closed a couple hundred stores and fired 20,000 people in the last few years. Only 1,900 more stores and 200,000 more employees to go. Sears will declare bankruptcy. It might be in 2015 or 2016, but they will declare bankruptcy.
They are run by a Wall Street shyster and have been dying for the last decade. Wall Street reacted to the news by bumping the stock up. That’s the America we inhabit. They are even closing their store in the King of Prussia Mall. If you can’t make a profit in one of the most successful malls in America, you can’t make a profit anywhere.
More SPACE AVAILABLE signs coming to a mall near you.
Sears to close stores, lay off about 5,500: Seeking Alpha
A sign for the Sears department store is seen at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia, January 7, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing
(Reuters) – Sears Holdings Corp (SHLD.O) is shuttering more than 100 stores and laying off at least 5,457 employees, investor website Seeking Alpha reported on Thursday, indicating the struggling retailer may be stepping up store closures.
Sears said in August it had closed 96 stores in the six months since February and planned to close a total of 130 underperforming stores during the full fiscal year. It added at the time that it may shutter additional stores beyond the 130 target.
Sears spokesman Chris Brathwaite declined to comment on the number of planned closures, saying the company would provide an update when it reports quarterly earnings next month. Reducing operations to the best performing stores is key to Sears’ revival strategy, he said.
“While this has resulted in store closures where appropriate – decisions that we do not take lightly – we continue to have a substantial nationwide footprint with a presence in many of the top malls in the country,” Brathwaite said.
Sears shares rose 5.9 percent to $36.46 on Nasdaq at mid-afternoon.
Since August the company has moved to close at least 46 Kmart stores, 30 Sears department stores and 31 Sears Auto Centers, Seeking Alpha said, citing local media reports and liquidation notices.
Sears is closing stores to cut costs as it shifts to an “asset-light” business model. The company lost nearly $1 billion during the first half of the fiscal year in a downturn that has worried some vendors and prompted a series of moves by the company to generate cash.
On Monday Sears said it would raise as much as $625 million through an unsecured loan and equity warrants, about half of which will be purchased by Chief Executive Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund. It was the company’s third fundraising in a little over month.
It also said on Monday that it would lease seven stores to discount fashion chain Primark for an undisclosed amount, reflecting its effort to use generate rental income from better performing retailers.
Sears had 1,077 Kmart stores and 793 Sears stores in the United States as of Aug. 2. The company had 226,000 U.S. employees as of Feb. 1.
The death of Sears has been along time coming. How much longer can they tread water?
Burn it to the Ground
They aren’t treading water. They lose $500 million every quarter. They are taking on water and will eventually sink. Billions in cheap debt can keep even the worse run companies afloat for awhile.
Well shit, they own over 1,000 Kmart stores! No wonder they’re going down in flames… Kmart is a fuckin boat anchor. NOBODY I know shops there… at all. I can’t even remember the last time I even saw a Kmart.
But I have noticed they’ve started pitching Kmart to the duskier segments of the population, same as they did with McShits when whites started abandoning it. Hawking long term layaways for Made-In-China shit (Krissmass ams comin’! Git dems toys fo yo chirrens! No credit? No prollem!), trying to come across all skreet an sheeit… and always some negro in the commercial telling us how great Kmart is…
Kmart started looking shabby, then whites abandoned it. They went ghetto, and now it shows. Perhaps if Sears started accepting EBT cards for everything, their sales would increase… Get a free bottle of Thunderbird or Night Train with every Craftsman socket set you purchase…
When Ikea goes under, Admin will get a two year hard-on.
Sears and Kmart have been on the downslope for 30 years at least, and Sears has been in decline since the 60s. It’s hard to see how these two places have lasted this long.
Kmart encourages the local Jr. College students to park in the Kmart parking lot waiting for the school bus to take them to the Jr. college campus which is about nine miles out of town. Kmart is a morgue waiting to die..
@Billy – My town has two Kmarts, both of which are located just down the road from Wal-marts, neither of which ever has customers. I went in one this summer (can’t for the life of my remember why) and literally only saw 5 other customers.
The only time Kmart sees business is during black friday. The rest of the year its completely barren. I don’t understand how their doors stay open.
Sears took one step closer to the abyss today:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2014/11/07/sears-shares-spike-as-company-seeks-to-raise-cash-through-a-reit/
“That Sears is desperate for cash is hardly news: the struggling retailer took out a $1 billion loan in October of last year and, less than a year later, hit up CEO Eddie Lampert for another $400 million. Now, the company has a new plan for cash generation: it is considering the sale of as many as 300 of its stores to a real estate investment trust (REIT) and then leasing back those stores. Even though the retailer did not say how much money this maneuver could generate, investors are cheering the idea, sending Sears stock for a more-than 30% gain in early Friday trading.”
Here’s what Sears is doing to one store at a mall in Miami with some of the highest per square sales in the nation (lots of South/Central American tourists with $ to burn). Pretty smart use of the “assets” I’d say.
“Sears submits plans for open-air village at Aventura Mall”
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article3688242.html
saw something suspiciuise