Sears says it will speed up store closings

Staff/wire report

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill.

Sears keeps pruning its business in a years-long makeover, a bid to transform itself from a 123-year-old retail store into a nimble, 21st- century operator.

Patience appears to be wearing thin. Shares slid early Tuesday to 13-year lows after the company said it would accelerate the closure of some of its stores after a “challenging” holiday season. The company’s stock is down 20 percent this year, and they’ve been cut in half in the past 12 months.

Comparable-store sales in the fourth quarter dropped 6.9 percent at Sears and 7.2 percent at Kmart, which the company also owns. That’s a key indicator of a retailer’s health because it excludes the volatility from stores recently opened or closed.

Sears Holdings Corp. has struggled for years with weakening sales, unable to keep up with companies that sell appliances, such as Home Depot, or general merchandise, such as Wal-Mart, or everything, as is the case with Amazon.com.

As for store closures, Sears said it will include, but not be limited to, about 50 stores that the company recently announced it would be shuttering in the next few months.

The company announced in January it would close both the Warren and Boardman Kmart locations. The Boardman store at 1209 Boardman-Poland Road will close in mid-April. Its liquidation sale began Jan. 24. The Warren store, 2485 Parkman Road NW, will close to the public in late April. A liquidation sale began Thursday.