Sears Posts $580 Million Quarterly Loss as Retailer Shrinks Footprint
Source: Bloomberg
February 25, 2016 — 6:12 AM EST
Sears Holdings Corp., the department-store operator run by hedge fund manager Edward Lampert, posted a $580 million fourth-quarter net loss as sales continued to slide. The company also named Bruce Berkowitz, its second-biggest shareholder, to the board.
The loss compared with a $159 million net loss a year earlier, the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based company said in a statement Thursday. On an adjusted basis, before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the loss was $82 million, within the $50 million to $100 million range Sears provided this month.
Lampert has been shrinking down the once-mighty retailer as its cash dwindles. He’s sold and spun off assets, including some of its best real estate, and invested heavily in Sears’s online and rewards programs. But that hasn’t halted the decline in sales at stores open at least a year, considered a key gauge of retail performance. The company’s cash balances were $238 million at the end of the quarter on Jan. 30, down from $250 million a year earlier.
“They’ve not maintained relevance with the consumer, who’s voting with their feet and shopping elsewhere,” Matt McGinley, an analyst at Evercore ISI, said in an interview before the results were released. The means the company will continue burning through cash “at horrendous rates” to fund its operations.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-25/sears-posts-580-million-fourth-quarter-loss-as-retailer-shrinks
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Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Local store has almost zero business.
pansypoo53219
(20,977 posts)
maryellen99
(3,789 posts)
mikeysnot
(4,757 posts)
houston16revival
(953 posts)was going to be revived by selling bankrupt companies' excesses
Maybe that's the plan? Collapse Sears into Kmart for Liquidation?
My local Kmart is going to close. Nothing new in the store in months
Firesales on closeout items
Human101948
(3,457 posts)This is exactly the same M.O. as Mitt Romney's Bain Capital--overload the company with debt, extract all kinds of exorbitant management fees and bleed the company dry until there is nothing left but a rotting corpse.
At this point, the retail locations are the real assets and he will soon sell those off.
harun
(11,348 posts)Probably title it "For the few not the many".
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Vampires.
seabeckind
(1,957 posts)All the assets that were acquired using the wealth of a healthy company to open "softer side" stores in fashion malls. Sears didn't "lose" money, it was redistributed from the value of its operations to the portfolio of its new owners.
Now the result is empty anchor stores in malls and the loss of quality products. We lost much more than money.
A scenario that has played out for the last 35 trickledown years in so many industries.
Empty husks.
And then there's "Bruce Berkowitz, its second-biggest shareholder to the board".
"Bruce R. Berkowitz is an equity fund manager and registered investment adviser.[1] Berkowitz founded Fairholme Capital Management in 1997 and was formerly a senior portfolio manager at Lehman Brothers Holdings and a managing director of Smith Barney. Berkowitz was named 2009 Domestic-Stock Fund Manager of the Year and Domestic-Stock Fund Manager of the Decade by Morningstar, Inc." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Berkowitz
Now he sounds like a real down to earth tool man. /sarcasm
OldRedneck
(1,397 posts)The first Sears CEO was Julius Rosenwald, son of a Jewish immigrant peddler, Rosenwald finished the 8th grade yet became one of the wealthiest men in America as well as being one of the most forward-looking and generous philanthropist.
One of his projects was the "Rosenwald Schools." With the collapse of Reconstruction and the establishment of Jim Crow in the South, local white school boards would do nothing to educate African-Americans. Booker T. Washington called to Rosenwald's attention the need for schools in black communities in the South.
It's a long story, but, Rosenwald set up a process whereby his foundation provided floor plans and seed money; local communities raised the rest of the money, bought materials, and provided labor.
Over 5,300 "Rosenwald Schools" were built, mostly in the South. With the coming of Brown v. Board of Education, the Rosenwald Schools gradually closed. Only a few hundred still stand. Some have been restored as museums and community centers, others stand, falling victim to the elements. Communities around the old Rosenwald Schools still have many -- now elderly -- African-Americans who owe their education to Julius Rosenwald and their local Rosenwald School.
http://www.preservationnation.org/rosenwald/
https://savingplaces.org/places/rosenwald-schools#.Vs93sOagv_s
http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/17/436402544/rosenwald-schools-built-a-century-ago-may-still-have-lessons-to-teach
Rosenwald also provided scholarships and grants to promising African-American artists, musicians, writers, and the like -- James Baldwin, Marian Anderson, Julian Bond's father . . .
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/hall_of_fame/julius_rosenwald
Independent filmmaker Aviva Kempner makes movies about unknown Jewish heroes. Her movie "Rosenwald" is finished and is showing in selected venues as she tries to raise money to produce a DVD with extra material.
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/19/432910288/rosenwald-celebrates-the-greatest-philanthropist-youve-never-heard-of
http://www.rosenwaldfilm.org/
Julius Rosenwald once said: "Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary."
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/julius_rosenwald.html
Uben
(7,719 posts)Sears sucks. HAve for the last twenty years. I wouldn't take any of their stuff if they were giving it away. Their management policy has been their downfall. They just refused to correct any of their shitty store policies. You don't blatantly fuck your customers and workers out of their money and stay in business. Their CEOs have been some of the worst in American business history!
You want junk? Shop Sears....you'll get it!
packman
(16,296 posts)Grew up in the 60's and Sears was considered top-line. If you shopped at Sears, you had achieved something. In the 90's it was in decline and visibly decaying. Today the only Sears around is a small catalog store in my part of the woods.
Shandris
(3,447 posts)I shopped at my local Sears for Christmas. I felt like crying when I was in there though, so I didn't stay long. It was...depressing. I remember when that Sears had 3 walls of televisions from 16 manufacturers (Ok, 14, because Sears owned 2 of them), and that was when 32 and 36 were 'big' (but not 'big screen'; they predated ProScan's 40"+ glass screen entry into the market and weren't projection TV's - those had their own wall, too) so there was a LOT of televisions. And that was just a tiny section of the store.
For the younger-than-me among us, a soft word of advice: no matter how boring, how mundane it seems now, enjoy it. Most of it will be gone and you will miss it, even if that thought seems completely unconscionable to you now. It's beauty lies in its impermanence; a lesson I wish I'd known earlier.
And, as for the title...
Wednesdays
(17,380 posts)and by then Sears and Kmart will just be footnotes in history. 