Sears Holdings Corp. discredited Thursday’s report that said it will be closing more than 100 stores and auto centers, and cut nearly 5,500 jobs in the U.S.
Seeking Alpha, a financial news and market tracker, cited liquidation notices and employee communication sent out last month that announced the closures of 31 Sears Auto Centers, 46 Kmart stores and 30 Sears department stores. According to the reports, the closures are slated to come before Christmas and be completed by the end of January 2015.
Howard Riefs, a Sears spokesman, told the Associated Press in an email that the store count and list of closures was inaccurate. The AP said that Riefs declined to offer further details on the closings except that Sears would update its store count in its Q3 financial results due in November.
“As we have previously communicated, adjusting our physical footprint to focus on our best performing locations is a core component of our transformation. While this has resulted in store closures where appropriate — decision that we do not take lightly — we continue to have a substantial nationwide footprint with a presence in many of the top malls in the country,” wrote Riefs.
Sears Holdings, which has piled up a string of bad sales and financial results over the last several years, closed 75 Kmart stores and 21 Sears stores in the first half of 2014.
Recently, Sears Holdings announced it was selling most of its stake in Sears Canada for a reported $380 million, generating much-needed cash ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season, according to a Reuters report.
In December 2013, the company raised about $500 million from the spinoff of its Lands’ End clothing business and $165 million from the sale of real estate.
This past September, Sears Holdings also took a short-term loan of $400 million from chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert’s ESL Partners LP.
These efforts and others have resulted in further losses for the company. The New York Times reported that for the quarter ended Aug. 2, Sears lost $573 million, up drastically from $194 million in the year ago period. That brought the retailer’s losses for the second half of the fiscal year to $975 million.
