Wednesday, September 11, 2013

More Sears Discussion at CB&F ($SHLD)

Link.

"Sears no longer needs the large retail footprint that it previously held in order to serve its customers. That's the whole anchor padding portion of the presentation. By reducing its retail footprint, Sears will be able to transition portions of any or all of their properties to a better higher use without having to sacrifice much, if any, of their retail operations.

It's telling that the Credit Suisse report does not address any of the conference call transcripts from SPG, GGP, et. al. while focusing only on their own internal numbers."
Also:
"The deals where they 'right size' the location like the anecdote in my town (and a number of the examples in the Baker street report), where they subdivide and throw in a Wholefoods (or other "growth" retailer) probably don't correlate at all to a decrease in SHLD retail EBITDA generated the location. In fact, it is probably more likely it would have a positive impact in terms of traffic and overall value of the parcel, even if it doesn't result in increased retail EBITDA generation by the SHLD retail ops remaining in place on the property."
Great discussion over there. Go read it.

Short interest numbers for the end of August were reported after the close today: 16.6 million shares, which was an increase of 862,173 from the middle August.

So it could be that this recent up move was from longs adding to their positions and not even short covering yet!

2 comments:

Mark said...

What is your take on the fundamental case, absent the potential for a technical short-squeeze?

CP said...

Better than I first thought. It looks like you can maybe take a sears box, sublet half the space to other retailers, and do the same amount of business out of the other half.

Plus, as a quasi-fundamental, the company has almost been taken private by a big group that is absolutely certain it's worth over $100.