Just days after troubled retailer Sears Holdings was put on (yet another) deathwatch after its stock crashed to all time lows while it CDS hit a record high, earlier this week, the short squeeze is back, with the stock surging 20% pre market, after the company announced it is planning steps to improve liquidity and financial flexibility, launching a strategic restructuring program intended to streamline operations and improve its dreadful operating performance, targeting cost cuts of at least $1 billion while repaying over a billion in outstanding pension obligations.
The announcement comes as Sears announced another brutal quarter, in which revenue crashed 16% to $6.1 billion and net losses rose to $635 million from $580 million in the period last year according to preliminary results. For the full year, Sears expects revenues to fall 12% from last year to $22.1 billion.
The company, controlled by its billionaire chief executive, Edward Lampert who over a decade ago took Kmart out of bankruptcy, announced his new plan to cut costs by at least $1 billion in 2017 by reducing overhead, improving merchandise at its stores and through better inventory management.
Company CEO and Chairman said “to build on our positive momentum, today we are initiating a fundamental restructuring of our operations that targets at least $1.0 billion in cost savings on annualized basis, as well as improves our operating performance. To capture these savings, we plan to reduce our corporate overhead, more closely integrate our Sears and Kmart operations and improve our merchandising, supply chain and inventory management.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Feb 10, 2017.
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