Newswatcher5

Invest Now with a Keen Eye and Be Regarded a Genius for Decades

I would suggest that the last thing Mr. Sullivan can look forward to is being called a genius for decades.

Credit Markets Overstate Sears Bankruptcy Risk

Why is it worth mentioning that Sears has $10 billion in excess inventory of which it owns $7 billion's worth? That much inventory is NEVER a good thing in retail because it means you're being inundated with merchandise THAT YOU COULDN'T SELL IN YOUR STORES. Do you think it's going to somehow be worth that much more at the fire sale at liquidation time than it was to your customers? Again, that much inventory is a liability, not an asset.

Sooner or later you guys are just going to have to let go and admit that the "Golden Boy of retail" and the "Next Warren Buffet" is neither of those things but merely someone who managed to get his hands on a few bucks of someone else's money during a time when anyone with a few million could find all the low hanging fruit he wanted just waiting to be picked.

The low hanging fruit is all gone now and if Eddie Lampert were as brilliant as some of you think he is, Sears wouldn't be in the toilet and he wouldn't have lost 5 billion bucks.


On Dec 23 09:26 AM fcharlie wrote:

> Nice to see an article that presents the asset and liquidity situation
> with facts instead of the typical article that picks and chooses
> specific metrics that do not directly affect solvency, such as same
> store sales, and the appearance of stores, etc...
>
> It's worth mentioning that even as Same store sales declined every
> single quarter from 2005-2007, SHLD generated more free cash flow
> than it's current market cap. And it's also worth mentioning that
> SHLD has $10 billion of inventory, $7 billion of which is fully paid
> for and owned, which secures it's $4 billion dollar revolving credit
> line. To the extent that SHLD may have difficulty renewing or extending
> it's credit line in 2010, you would have to assume that Lampert has
> a backup plan already, and I don't see any reason why his own hedge
> fund couldn't extend a line of credit to SHLD. He will do whatever
> is necessary to insure the solvency of his company.

Sitting Pretty With Sears - Cramer's Lightning Round (9/18/08)

Isn't this the guy that was boosting Bear Stearns a couple of days before they went belly up?

While Street Yells 'Sell!' Lampert Buys Back 4% of Sears

Didn't SHC have close to four billion bucks right after the takeov... er, merger, and hasn't roughly three quarters of that been spent on stock buybacks already while the company... as a retail entity... has continued to drop into the toilet at the rate of from 3-6% per quarter in sales and market share.

I realize most of you aren't interested in anything but short term results and that a lot of you are making out like bandits as Eddie plays his little game. BUt I'm also curious as to what happens MORE than three months down the road... say when he runs out of company cash to buy back stock, runs out of ways to cut costs and still keep the doors open, and... most importantly, based on the rate he's losing them... runs out of customers on whom to base a pretense that he's running a retail operation.

What's going to happen then?

Earnings Preview: Sears Holdings

Does anyone ever get tired of seeing this same old quarterly story coupled with almost desperate speculation on what "miracles" will be wrought by Mr. Lampert in order to try to justify all the hype these same publications were spewing about him up until about a year ago?

Sears has been suffering same store sales declines for years now. For a while after he stepped in, Mr. Lampert was able to provide some return solely through cost cutting and tight fisting, at first enough to offset the sales and market share losses.

Alas for him, this is not a sustainable business model... sooner or later you run out of cuts to make and ways to hang the bottom line on the backs of your employees.

Now the time has come when there's nothing left to cut and there's a need to try to figure out how to get back all those sales and some of that market share he frittered away pretending to have a plan that was going to work.

Unfortunately, the emperor's new clothes, at least in the form of Mr. Lampert's radical makeover of the retail industry look suspiciously like an empty suit.

Mr. Sullivan, if you read this, don't be drinking coffee. ;)

Sears Faces Risk If Economy Doesn't Improve

>>>It's nice to know that any idiot with a computer can now play financial analyst. I've never seen a more fitting last name...<<<

When Lampert started his little one trick pony show, Sears had almost FOUR BILLION in cash reserves, it's stock was flying high, it's name brands hadn't been watered down and it hadn't suffered through 4 years of 4-5% sales declines every year.

All the writer is saying is that Lampert's attempt to be a retailer has been a dismal failure and that economic conditions no longer favor him being able to bail himself out with real estate and other asset sales, which is pretty obvious even to those of us who lack your financial acumen.

If your going to be a critic, maybe you could also tell us what new tricks the heretofore one trick pony has learned and may be pulling from whatever dark place he keeps them in to save the day.

Sears Remains a Compelling Short

I find it amazing how every quarter, SHC trots out the same lame old excuses for doing worse than virtually everyone else in retail without once admitting that its failure just might be based, at least in part, on Eddie Lampert's insistence on trying to reinvent retail and failing miserably to do so.

Now he's gonna spend that last billion bucks (of nearly four billion when he started) on even more buybacks of his own worthless shares.

By the time that's done he should have been able to finish polluting the iconic brand names through cost cutting and generally lousy customer service to the point that they're merely empty names, already surpassed by other brands in reputation for quality.

Sooner or later, people are going to have to admit that all that high value real estate he's sitting on is worth exactly what someone else is willing to pay for it and in today's market, given his KMart locations, the fact that many of his Sears stores are in failing malls and the generally obsolete and run down condition of most of his real estate, that's going to be pretty much nothing at all.

And by the time he's done with all that, he should have set even more new records for same store sales decreases and loss of market share. All of this before he has to produce some fertilizer or get off the pot.

It's no wonder he can't get a CEO to come to work for him. What CEO with any reputation at all. especially one specializing in retail, wants to take Aylwin Lewis' place as the front man in what has become a textbook example of how to paint yourself into a corner by bleeding a company to death in three years and THEN deciding maybe ya shouldn't oughta have done some of that stuff?