dingojoe

Don't Forget Sears' Housing Connection

Sears will still a big box retailer five years from now, because it's hard to envision a scenario that enables them to monetize their assets in that time frame (I guess one long shot would be Walmart deciding they want to enter the appliance market and deciding buying Sears would be the best way to do it--I would think there would be some huge antitrust issues with all that, but I'm not a lawyer).

Retail real estate, especially big box real estate will be glutted for a long, long time. Lands End probably has some value on it's own or since it's not closely tied to Sears, another retailer may be interested. The other brands, Kenmore, Craftsman, and Die Hard, are closely tied to Sears and it's questionable just exactly who would be willing to buy them and as sales go down the value of the brands go down too. Sears Canada seems capable of functioning as retailer on it's own so it has value.

I've never been in the SHLD is going bankrupt camp, but I do think SHLD is a lousy retailer who can't monetize it's assets in the foreseeable future and those assets will continue to deteriorate in value year after year. The Barron's article did make very good points regarding FCF vs EBITDA and Eddie's retort is unconvincing. It's quite the box Eddie is in.