Store closing sale at the Sears in the Dover Mall in Dover, Delaware in May 2018. The store will close in August 2018.
Sears
Holdings Corp. SHLD -8.57% said
Thursday that it plans to close another 72 stores it has deemed unprofitable,
as the company continues to struggle with falling sales.
Sears
has been closing hundreds of stores in recent years,
selling brands and spinning off divisions to stay afloat as losses have mounted
and as it struggles to keep its customers away from WalmartInc., Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.23% and other outlets.
The company said a
list of the 72 stores would be posted later Thursday.
SEARS’
DESCENT
The new round of
store closures comes as the retailer reported sales fell in the latest quarter,
extending a streak of declines that stretches back more than six years at the
once dominant retailer.
The last time
Sears’s sales increased from the previous year was in the third quarter of
2011, when the company had $9.4 billion in revenue, according to data
from Thomson
Reuters .
In the latest
quarter, total merchandise sales fell 34% to $2.2 billion. Total revenue, which
includes money generated from appliance and product-repair services, fell 31%
to $2.89 billion.
Decline and Fall Sears
sales have fallen for more than six years straight. Year-over-year change in
quarterly sales Source: Thomson Reuters Eikon %2012’14’16’18-40-30-20-10010
Same-store sales at
Sears locations fell 13.4%, while they declined 9.5% at Kmart locations. The
company operated 894 total locations as of May 5, down from 1,275 as of around
the same time the year prior.
Sears reported a
first-quarter net loss of $424 million, or $3.93 a share, compared with a
profit of $245 million, or $2.29 a share, a year earlier. The prior-year
quarter’s results got a $741 million lift from asset sales. In the latest
period, Sears recorded a $165 million benefit.
Sears is currently
weighing whether to divest its Kenmore appliance brand and other units. The
moves follow prodding by Sears Chief Executive Edward Lampert, who has proposed that his hedge fund purchase the assets if
the company is unable to find other buyers.
Mr. Lampert, who is
also Sears’s biggest investor and among its biggest lenders,
said in an April letter to the Sears board that his ESL Investments Inc., which
owns a controlling stake in the retailer, is willing to submit offers for
Kenmore, the Sears Home Improvement and Parts Direct businesses as well as some
real estate, including $1.2 billion in debt secured by the properties. History of Sears: HERE
Kmart Corporation (simply known as Kmart and
stylized as kmart) is an American big box department store chain headquartered
in Hoffman
Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was incorporated in 1916 as S.
S. Kresge Corporation and renamed to Kmart Corporation in 1977.[3] The
first store with the Kmart name opened in 1962.[4] At
its peak in 2000, Kmart operated 2,171 stores including 105 Super Kmart Center
locations.[5] The
chain’s management purchased Sears for $11
billion in 2004, forming a new corporation under the name Sears
Holdings Corporation; Kmart was transferred to the new Sears Holdings
Corporation.[6] For
the 2005 fiscal year under the new company, the Kmart store count was at 1,416
with only 55 Super Kmart Center locations.[7] By the
third quarter of 2017, the Kmart store chain had 510 store locations (which now
decreased to 432 after several rounds of store closures announced proceeding Q3
of 2017). The last Super Kmart Center in Warren, Ohio closed on April 8, 2018.
Kmart currently operates stores in 46 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands,
and Guam[8] (which houses
the world's largest Kmart).[9] Kmart formerly
operated stores in Canada, Mexico, Singapore, and in Eastern Europe.
