Lambert told Judge Drain the 425 Stores remaining were profitable and 45-50k jobs were being saved. What changed? How do over half of the stores go in the "Red". This seems like a complete lie and Lambert will spend lots of time in court to be sure. My big question is how is TransformCo going to pay rent and or property taxes on these 250 closed stores? Certainly they are not all company owned and the property taxes on the Kmart Plaza in my town is $135k per year. This location is company owned. The store manager said it would be the last Kmart to close and she was wrong. Kmart's FB page is like a huge funeral took place where people are upset their stores are closing. I do not see much of this on Sears FB page though. Whoever runs the page has said Kmart will make a comeback and actually open stores in the future. Complete lies! I said too many bad things about Lambert and was banned from posting or messaging the page. It appears Kmart & Sears will only have an online presence according to an employee in live chat. So please answer about rent and taxes. 12000 Retail stores closed in 2019 so there is a glut of retail space. I dont see anyone wanting to buy old Kmart & Sears museums.
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That's the dumbest thing all along, thinking the value of company with literally millions of customers and over a billion in cash flow was in the real estate. Other companies see companies as precious assets to be nutured, grown, and profited of. Eddie spends $2 on them for every $1 he gets back. liquidating everything just to keep the money losing operation alive. Even his supposedly shady side play, Seritage needed a massive multibillion dollar cash infusion just to stay afloat at horrendous terms, and that's a free cash flow zombie too.
Many of the closings of truly profitable stores are simply real estate transactions, where the leases are bought out by either the landlord or a competing interest. if he is offered 5 or 10x EBITA (which may not be alot) to vacate, that store is history!
Dum dum, they've closed the store, they can default on their lease now- can't evict a closed store!
They will pay rent and taxes until they can't and then go to bankruptcy again. Simple. And one can easily document how a store that was profitable went unprofitable. Document it enough to start countering any lawsuit that "Eddie lied to the Judge". Although getting that lawsuit to stick is going to be problematic. Someone who lost something by TransformCo buying the stores from bankrupt SHC will need to file the suit. You can't just file a suit that "Transformco lied".
And remember, Transformco's lawyers said all this to the judge. Eddie was never in the court. So if you expect/want Eddie to be dragged down, it won't happen over this.
In fact, he's had so many lawyers, there is little consequence he will feel. That's why he's still doing his usual thing. Well insulated.
Unfortunate to the 300,000+ who lost jobs. But that's the way its going to play out. Politicians can state its a travesty all they want at election time. They aren't going to pass any new laws that retroactively put Eddie in jail.
Eddie Lampert is thin-skinned. He hates criticism. He allows his peeps ban employees who call him out. He deserves the criticism for what he has done to the company.