augustabound Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 To get an idea of revenue attributable to online sales I did some crawling through linkedIn profiles and found a Sears Ecommerce manager/director that said they were responsible for around 1.5 Billion in ecom revenue. Being a tech person myself I have spent a lot of time reading through linkedin profiles for SHLD people and also reading job descriptions for the positions they have open on the Sears Holdings website. For me it helps paint of picture of whats going on behind the scenes with the online strategy. I've never thought of going to a site like Linkedin to research stocks. Nice idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twacowfca Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 To get an idea of revenue attributable to online sales I did some crawling through linkedIn profiles and found a Sears Ecommerce manager/director that said they were responsible for around 1.5 Billion in ecom revenue. Being a tech person myself I have spent a lot of time reading through linkedin profiles for SHLD people and also reading job descriptions for the positions they have open on the Sears Holdings website. For me it helps paint of picture of whats going on behind the scenes with the online strategy. I've never thought of going to a site like Linkedin to research stocks. Nice idea. Yes, great detective work. Thanks for sharing. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grenville Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Enjoying the discussion. I read the 2010 10K over the weekend and the annual letter. I had a question if you guys could share your insight. Does Sears breakout absolute $ of online sales or sales from home services which includes home improvement? It would be nice to get a better feel for what parts of the business are doing good, they do provide commentary about comparables but its hard to get insight from those figures. Long time reader, first time posting... To get an idea of revenue attributable to online sales I did some crawling through linkedIn profiles and found a Sears Ecommerce manager/director that said they were responsible for around 1.5 Billion in ecom revenue. Being a tech person myself I have spent a lot of time reading through linkedin profiles for SHLD people and also reading job descriptions for the positions they have open on the Sears Holdings website. For me it helps paint of picture of whats going on behind the scenes with the online strategy. Thanks for the suggestion at the number for online, I'll take a look through linked in. Any thoughts on their home services business or the breakdown of home improvement? It is bothersome that the breakdown for online, home services, repairs, appliances, tools, lawn aren't given in the reports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myth465 Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 Reading through the thread I couldn't help but tell myself "I hope Lampert reads this board". Because some of you guys seem to have much more detailed action plans than Eddie, or I should say than what he has communicated to shareholders so far. Which begs the question, why? Why is it that his investors have to spend all this time guesstimating what's next? Why not just say exactly what he intends to do so that investors can decide whether they want in or not? I have been saying this for 2 years.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 It almost looks like he is doing it intentionally although it can't be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texual Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 That's okay too. It's not an easy job. I'd be very apprehensive about someone who thought this was. Its only going to be awesome if theres a turnaround here. And I'm not talking about the retail stores making a consumer comeback. Not happening, ever. I want this firm to be as tech focused as amazon, and sell their own proprietary brands (craftsman/lands end/kenmore - just like amazon has the kindle). They could either keep growing in that direction or spend it otherwise to diversify. Just don't put money into the stores. Thats a losing strategy - ESL is not stupid, no matter what the stock price suggests. Lou at Sears has a background in technology and IT. I think we could argue that Jeff Bezos knows nothing about retailing either. It's not the same environment, he has an eye for where the ball is going. Its going online whether people want to admit that or not. Its a market that grows. Big box will remain key, and just like DVD with Netflix, eventually becomes a no growth to negative trend. Replaced by streaming. I'm sure plenty of people still use the DVDs and believe its going to be around for many years. They are both right and wrong. The growth comes from streaming. Supporting DVD isnt a good long term choice. Supporting the Sears big box format is unwise for the long term. Growing your online capabilities is smart. They just happen at different rates and its very hard to predict when and where there will be a divergence. Look at what happened at Netflix this year alone. I still think the ceo is smart as a whip. He just can't time it. I read this year DVD sales fell by 9%. Is Reed hastings brilliant or stupid? I think time will tell. -I will note that I have been very wrong about this company and my performance in investments have gone very badly because of it. I've reduced my position by half and will revisit SHLD after the annual meeting and letter are available for me to consider. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mevsemt Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 I think you don't have to look much further than the #1 and #2 spots at Sears. Lou and Robert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schriesheim) are NOT the guys you'd bring in to turn around the retail operations of a 4000 store, $40B revenue company. It's true both these guys have IT experience, but I'm not sure how relevant that is either. Rather, both these guys, especially Robert, are transactional/restructuring guys. And call me crazy, but just about all the significant developments in 2011 are the what I'd expect to see in a Sears transformation: Orchard spin off, Craftsmen at Costco, store closures. So, IF (big if) a transformation is about to get underway, the question is this: is there enough value under the Sears umbrella to earn a satisfactory return for shareholders? At just over $30 a share, it might be a risk worth taking... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BargainValueHunter Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 On October 27, 2011 SHLD traded at over $80. Now, apparently, Barron's has picked up on the $6 per share valuation theme... http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748703451204577126782586713096.html Last week's announcement further implied that Sears could soon face a cash crunch. Sears signaled that its favorite and all-forgiving metric, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation and amortization, or Ebidta, for the fiscal fourth quarter would drop by half. That would result in a total of around $400 million in adjusted Ebitda for the year, compared with $1.45 billion earned a year ago and $3.3 billion five years ago, observes Credit Suisse retail analyst Gary Balter. That trend, he says, calls into question Sears' ability to survive. Who says you need tech start-ups or biotech to get wild mood swings in the valuation of individual securities? ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bargainman Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 Which begs the question, why? Why is it that his investors have to spend all this time guesstimating what's next? Why not just say exactly what he intends to do so that investors can decide whether they want in or not? I have been saying this for 2 years.... Because... he doesn't know!!!! He knew when he bought it.. he was going to liquidate.. then he realized he didn't want the firing of several hundred thousand employees and their families on his hands/conscience, so he changed his mind. Then he approached it in a data centric logical sort of way and said he would try a different thing in every store and see what worked, look at the data, and replicate the things that worked and kill the things that didn't. But from what I read the execution was lacking.. Hence it was a case of garbage in garbage out on the data. Then he got that biggest financial crisis and credit crisis and real estate crash since the great depression on his hands. Then he kept not investing in the stores which made the business and the business's reputation deteriorate... He's smart but he's no oracle. I'm sure he has some general plan, but I'm sure it's fluid.. and when your plan is fluid sometimes it's better not to communicate it lest you get a cognitive bias, the same reason Pabrai doesn't discuss his investments... The other thing about that Buffett quote... “When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.” It doesn't quite apply since Lampert never had a reputation for brilliance when it comes to management, just investment. That's a whole different ballgame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myth465 Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 bargainman, I concur with alot of what you wrote. That just seems like the most logical answer to a straight forward question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BargainValueHunter Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 http://bit.ly/si63eP From 2003-2007, Sears Holdings made decent real estate and balance sheet moves which fueled profit growth during its bull run from $30 per share in 2003 to $195 in 2007. This of course was partly fueled by the real estate and CDO fraud bubble courtesy of cheap money. But real estate aside, if you search old articles, retail expert Howard Davidowitz wasn't a believer in Lampert's retail strategy from the beginning. And when sales and market share started slipping away to competitors, Davidowitz believed the success of SHLD was riding on Lampert's hedge fund abilities (putting cash to work). Value investors were starting to bail at this point. Third Avenue's Martin Whitman, who was also involved in Kmart's debt-to-equity conversion out of bankruptcy, sold 2.25 million shares in 2005. In 2006 the Third Avenue Real Estate fund dumped 250,000 shares. Whitman wasn't convinced of the retail story. I found another interesting article from 9/2005: "Lampert May Need 'Merchant's Eye' To Pick Fashions At Sears". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlanMaestro Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-03/sears-turnaround-means-using-tech-with-store-upgrades.html This does not look good. Technology turnaround ... I do not know many of those. This quote is good though “Borders had great bathrooms but that didn’t help them because they missed the e-book revolution in their industry.” JC Penney talking about Sears, Sears talking about Borders. Bottom line, retail turnarounds are not easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
biaggio Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 Sears taps retail veteran to oversee merchandising Question is whether he’ll be given the authority to steer ship http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sears-taps-retail-veteran-to-oversee-merchandising-2012-01-03 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogermunibond Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Isn't the job of the chief merchandiser to make sure that the stuff Sears buys is the stuff that their customers want to buy? Not really the guy who will steer the ship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BargainValueHunter Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Dear Eddie: Do what Alex Smith @ Pier 1 did. http://www.cnbc.com/id/45688879 In 2009, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and its stock was trading as low as 10 cents at the generational bottom. However, since then the company has been “one of the strongest performers out there,” Cramer said. Pier 1: A HUNDRED Bagger! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
compoundinglife Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-03/sears-turnaround-means-using-tech-with-store-upgrades.html This does not look good. Technology turnaround ... I do not know many of those. This quote is good though “Borders had great bathrooms but that didn’t help them because they missed the e-book revolution in their industry.” JC Penney talking about Sears, Sears talking about Borders. Bottom line, retail turnarounds are not easy. That quote cracked me up. Specifically because a year or two ago I was on a work trip and decided to check out a borders store to see how busy it was and how many staff they had, I checked out the bathroom and it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in days and thought to myself these guys are done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcollon Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Lampert Group Cuts AutoZone Stake by 42% Amid Redemptions, Reorganizations http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-04/lampert-group-cuts-autozone-stake-by-42-amid-redemptions.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher1 Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 I read the SEC filings, technically he is not selling but distributing shares of AZO and AN pro-rata for redemptions. Couriously, ot his three biggest holdings, it seems that he decided to not distribute SHLD shares, they are only moved through the different entities for re-organizations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShahKhezri Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 If anything, this just makes me think that EL is going "all in" SHLD. Probably not a bad thing if you think the guy still have above average IQ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
biaggio Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 If anything, this just makes me think that EL is going "all in" SHLD. Probably not a bad thing if you think the guy still have above average IQ. that would warm my heart but I may question his IQ. Should be interesting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlanMaestro Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I was checking the puts/calls for SHLD and I am getting 2 prices, one says it is adjusted. What it is adjusted for? The merger was long time ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merkhet Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Plan -- there is one that includes Orchard and one that does not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JEast Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Just got around to reading the Fall 2011 edition of 'Graham & Doddsville' which was probably put together sometime in September/October. As a big fan of Marty Whitman, I was somewhat surprised that he was quoted as saying Sears was toast. This even though he teamed with ESL on the Kmart deal. I would assume he is starting to like some of the bonds or trade receivables though. Cheers JEast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bargainman Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 JEast, Whitman also was pounding the drum on MBIA back when Ackman was shorting it. We know who won that one.... Just pointing out he's been wrong before.... (as we all have :-) ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Whitman's performance has been pretty (less than) middling over the past 10 years. http://quote.morningstar.com/fund/f.aspx?t=TAVFX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now