Details on Sears 3Q earnings report
For the three months ending November 1, Sears Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:SHLD), which also owns retailer Kmart, reported a loss of $548 million, or $5.15 per share. In the one year ago quarter, the firm reported a loss of $534 million, or $5.03 per share. Total revenues were down around 13% to just over $7.21 billion.
In one bright spot that augurs well for the future, online sales were up more than 9% from a year ago.
Comparable store sales were, however, anemic. Sales at the firm’s Kmart locations open a year or more increased by 0.5% in the quarter. Comparable-store sales at Sears stores were disappointing as they slipped by 0.7%.
Firm has been raising cash
Sears Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:SHLD) has been raising cash for some time now. The firm received a $400 million loan from a hedge fund run by CEO Eddie Lampert earlier this fall, and the retailer is down from 3,523 stores just five years ago to under 2,000 stores today.
Sears also announced a few weeks ago that it could sell 200 to 300 of its properties to improve liquidity. This would would mean creating a real estate investment trust that would hold the stores, and Sears would continue to operate the stores through a lease arrangement.
Sears also noted in its statement Thursday that its long-term debt has shrunk to $2.8 billion from $2.9 billion a year earlier. Of note, the firm has $2.2 billion in liquidity for fiscal 2014, and had $1.5 billion available in a credit facility as of Wednesday.
“Our stores are often in the wrong place and are often too large for our needs,” Lampert said in a recorded conference call Thursday morning.
