Sears Holdings Results

Going to be an ugly day for Lampert and compnay.

Sears (SHLD) today reported net income of $2 million, or $0.01 per diluted share, for
the Q3 ended November 3, 2007, compared with net income of $196 million, or $1.27 per diluted share, for the Q3 ended October 28, 2006. The Q3 2006 results included $101 million in pre-tax gains ($64 million after tax or $0.42 per diluted share) on total return swap investments outstanding during that period.

Excluding these gains, earnings per diluted share were $0.85 for the Q3 of fiscal 2006. The year-over-year decline in income is primarily the result of a $223
million decline in gross margin, reflecting both sales declines, as well as an overall decline in our gross margin rate for the quarter due to discounting.

Operating income for the quarter decreased $230 million to $46 million in 2007, as compared to $276 million in the third quarter of 2006, mainly due to lower gross margin generated at both Kmart and Sears. For the quarter, Sears Holdings generated $3.2 billion in total gross margin as compared to $3.4 billion in the third quarter last year.

Lampert had cash and cash equivalents of $1.5 billion at 11/3 (of which $0.8 billion was domestic and $0.7 billion was at Sears Canada) as compared to $2.1 billion at October 28, 2006. The $1.1 billion net decline in cash for the quarter primarily reflects $0.9 billion used for share repurchases and $0.9 billion used to build inventories for the holiday selling season, partially offset by $0.6 billion of cash generated through short-term borrowings that have been repaid as of 11/27.

Lampert repurchased 6.7 million common shares at a total cost of $0.9 billion (or $131.72 per share) under our share repurchase program during Q3. As of November 27, he had remaining authorization to repurchase $736 million of common shares under the program.

The bright spot was November month-to-date period (Sunday, November 4, 2007
through Tuesday, November 27, 2007) domestic comparable store sales
at Sears increasing 1.9%.

Good? Hell no. Sucks actually. But, did you really expect any better? Sears is going to get hit hard today and that is fine as I will be a buyer when shares drop below $110. Retails stories are long term ones ans Lampert is only in act two. Act one was getting both companies off the bankruptcy express, act two is determining the format which appears to be a brand central one. Act three will be the roll out of this (this will happen over the next year) and then we wait.

The good news is share count is decreasing rapidly, now down to about 137 million so the turnaround earnings will be excellerated for those holding shares.

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