NEW YORK – Sears Holdings Corp. plans to close between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores to raise cash after a weak holiday shopping season for the retailer.
The closings fueled speculation about whether the 125-year-old retailer can turn itself around.
The closings are the latest and most visible in a long series of moves to try to fix a company that has struggled with falling sales and shabby stores as rivals like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. spruced up their looks and turned into one-stop shopping sources.
"There's no reason to go to Sears," said New York-based independent retail analyst Brian Sozzi, "It offers a depressing shopping experience and uncompetitive prices."
Billionaire investor Edward Lampert purchased Kmart out of bankruptcy in 2003 and bought Sears, Roebuck & Co. a year later. Since 2004 Sears Holdings — which operates both Kmart and Sears stores — has watched its cash and short-term investments go from about $2.09 billion for the year ended Jan. 31, 2004 to $1.34 billion for the year ended Jan. 31, 2011, according to FactSet. The figure now stands at about $700 million.
Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter says the softer-than-expected holiday sales performance point to "deepening problems at this struggling chain and renewed worries about Sears survivability."
Balter added that Sears' weakening performance may lead its vendors to start to worry about their exposure. If vendors stop shipping to a retailer or start insisting on cash up front, it can spell the end.
That company disputes talk that it is in trouble financially or will have problems surviving. Spokesman Chris Brathwaite says Sears Holdings has more than $3.5 billion of liquidity, consisting of $700 million in cash and $2.9 billion available under its credit lines.
Still, Sears Holdings said its declining sales, ongoing pressure on profit margins and rising expenses pulled its adjusted earnings lower. The company predicts fourth-quarter adjusted earnings will be less than half the $933 million it reported for the same quarter last year.
The retailer also anticipates a non-cash charge of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion in the quarter to write off the value of carried-over tax deductions it now doesn't expect to be profitable enough to use.
Some industry experts say part of the problem Sears is facing is that economic difficulties continue to grip its core customers. These middle-income shoppers have seen their wages fail to keep up with higher costs for household basics like food.
But the bigger issue, analysts say, is that Sears hasn't invested in remodeling, leaving its stores uninviting.
Preschool teacher Sara Kriz concurred. Picking up conditioner at a Kmart in Manhattan on Tuesday, Kriz said she shops at Kmart "only when I have to," which amounts to once every few months. Yet she goes to Wal-Mart or Target nearly every week because, she said, they are cleaner and better stocked.
"It seems easier to go to Target and Wal-Mart to get the same thing at the same price," she said.
Sears Holdings announced Tuesday that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 5.2 percent for the quarter-to-date at both Sears and Kmart. That includes the critical holiday shopping period. Its Kmart stores reported a 4.4 percent decline, with layaway faltering as rivals like Wal-Mart and Toys R Us found success with their own layaway programs, which allow financially stressed shoppers to finance their holiday purchases by paying a little at a time.
Both Kmart and Sears stores reported weak consumer electronics sales. Sears, whose same-store revenue dropped 6 percent, also reported softer sales of home appliances. The same-store revenue metric is a key gauge of a retailer's health because it excludes results from stores recently opened or closed.
Sears Holdings appeared to stumble early in the holiday season, as it opened its Sears, Roebuck and Co. stores at 4 a.m. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Rivals including Best Buy Co., Wal-Mart and Toys R Us opened as early as Thanksgiving night. Sears stores had opened on Thanksgiving Day in 2010. Kmart has been opening on Thanksgiving for years.
A hint that trouble might be brewing came in mid-December when Sears Holdings unexpectedly announced that 260 of its Sears, Roebuck and Co. locations would stay open until midnight through Dec. 23.

In an internal memo Tuesday to employees, CEO and President Lou D'Ambrosio said that the retailer had not "generated the results we were seeking during the holiday."

Like Sozzi, Balter believes the shopping experience is hurting Sears' performance.

"The extent of the (sales) weakness may be larger than expected but the reasons behind it are not. It begins and some would argue ends with Sears' reluctance to invest in stores and service," Balter said.

Sears has yet to determine which stores will close but said it will post on http://www.searsmedia.com when a final list is compiled. The company would not discuss how many, if any, jobs would be cut.

The company said that the store closings will generate $140 to $170 million in cash from inventory sales. It expects the sale or sublease of real estate holdings to add more cash.

The Hoffman Estates, Ill., company has more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Its stock dropped $10.66, or 23.3 percent, to $35.19 in midday trading. The shares dipped to their lowest point in more than three years at $35.13 earlier in the session.

Aside from the planned store closings, Sears is altering the way it handles stores that are not performing as well as others. The company says it will no longer prop up marginally performing stores in hopes of improving their performance and will now concentrate on cash-generating stores.

Sears Holdings said it also plans to lower its fixed costs by $100 million to $200 million and trim its 2012 peak domestic inventory by $300 million from 2011's $10.2 billion at the third quarter's end.

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Christina Rexrode contributed to this report from New York.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – With his hit "Midnight in Paris," Woody Allen wrote a humorous piece of fiction in which the protagonist hung out with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Salvador Dali.

It wasn't the first time he'd done that.

"They were easy for me to capture in the writing," Allen said in a recent interview with TheWrap. "I could write them off the top of my head. Because after all, who was I dealing with? Salvador Dali, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, the Fitzgeralds -- these are people we know from high school."

He also knew them, fictionally at least, in "A Twenties Memory," a short story that appeared in his 1971 book "Getting Even" after originally running under the title "How I Became a Comedian" in the Chicago Daily News.

I pulled out my old copy of the book over the weekend, looking for its one-act play "Death Knocks," a spin on Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," in which a dress manufacturer from Queens plays gin rummy with Death to buy himself more time.

And when I started leafing through the rest of the book, I was surprised to rediscover that the slim volume (which sported a 95-cent price tag) also contained "A Twenties Memory." In that four-page, first-person story, the narrator hangs out with Hemingway and Stein; visits Picasso's studio with Stein; goes to Man Ray's Paris home and meets Dali; and spends time with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who's troubled over his relationship with Zelda.

All of those characters (and some of the settings) resurfaced 40 years later in "Midnight in Paris" -- though fortunately for Owen Wilson, the film doesn't include a running motif in the short story, in which "we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and broke my nose."

(On the other hand, Owen Wilson famously broke his nose as a teenager, so maybe that helped him get the part.)

The story also includes a cast of characters who don't appear in "Midnight in Paris," the artist Juan Gris and the bullfighter Manolete among them. And its events certainly differ from the film. For instance:

"Both Gertrude Stein and I examined Picasso's newest works very carefully, and Gertrude Stein was of the opinion that 'art, all art, is merely an expression of something.' Picasso disagreed and said, 'Leave me alone. I was eating.' My own feelings were that Picasso was right. He had been eating."

Later:

"That year I went to Paris a second time to talk with a thin, nervous European composer with aquiline profile and remarkably quick eyes who would someday be Igor Stravinsky and then, later, his best friend. I stayed at the home of Man and Sting Ray and Salvador Dali joined us for dinner several times and Dali decided to have a one-man show which he did and it was a huge success, as one man showed up and it was a gay and fine French winter."

On the Fitzgeralds:

"Scott was having a big discipline problem and, while we all adored Zelda, we agreed that she had an adverse affect on his work, reducing his output from one novel a year to an occasional seafood recipe and a series of commas."

So "A Twenties Memory" is not "Midnight in Paris." But it was a treat to stumble across it and find Allen, then just beginning his career as a director, riffing on many of the same characters he would later use to such good effect in what has become his top-grossing film ever, with a remarkable theatrical run that began on May 20 and continued until the movie's home-video release last week.

And in a way, with its repeated scenes of broken noses, the story also touches on the same thing the film does: that while nostalgia for a past time is undeniably alluring, it's also a bit misleading.

"Once in a while, when I'm sitting at my typewriter and looking out the window and can't think of a joke, you think, Gee, it would be great to be having lunch at Maxim's, and then taking a walk on the Champs Elysees, going over to Cezanne's or Renoir's and having all that incredible beauty around me in Belle Epoque Paris," Allen told TheWrap.

"But you know, it would have been a situation with no antibiotics, no Novocain, a lot of anti-Semitism. It was not a paradise for everybody, and maybe not for anybody."


"We have one conception of things from the past. And certainly in my movie, that's what I wanted to trade on. But I'm sure if you were sitting in a restaurant with Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, they spoke very differently from what you'd imagine."

NEW YORK – Americans are gaining faith that the economy is on the upswing.
An improving job outlook helped the Consumer Confidence Index soar to the highest level since April and near a post-recession peak, according to a monthly survey by The Conference Board.
It marked the second straight monthly surge and coincided with what's wrapping up to be decent spending for the holiday shopping season.
The rise in confidence jibes with a better outlook for the overall economy. According to an Associated Press poll of three dozen private, corporate and academic economists, the U.S. economy will grow faster in 2012 — if isn't derailed by upheavals in Europe.
But confidence is still far below what's typically seen in a healthy economy. And Americans' mood could sour again if they start to feel more nervous if the debt crisis in Europe deepens and spreads to the U.S. On top of that, shoppers still face big obstacles — higher costs on household basics and a still-slumping housing market.
"This is encouraging. It's good to be talking about improvement," said Mark Vitner, an economist at Wells Fargo. "But there is still a lot of room for trouble."
The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index rose almost 10 points to 64.5 in December, up from a revised 55.2 in November. Analysts had expected 59. The level is close to the post-recession peak of 72, reached in February.
The surge in December builds on a big increase in November, when the index rose almost 15 points from October. That month's reading was the lowest since March 2009, when the index was 26.9, having begun a fitful recovery from its all-time low the month before of 25.3.
One component of the index that measures how shoppers feel now about the economy rose to 46.7, up from 38.3 in November. The other barometer, which measures how shoppers feel about the next six months, rose to 76.4, up from 66.4.
In particular, shoppers' assessment of the job market improved, according to preliminary results of the survey, which was conducted Dec. 1-14. Those anticipating more jobs in the months ahead increased to 13.3 percent from 12.4 percent while those anticipating fewer jobs declined to 20.2 percent from 23.8 percent.
Economists watch the confidence numbers closely because consumer spending — including items like health care — accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.
Americans have more reason to be optimistic as the year ends. The economy has produced at least 100,000 new jobs for five months in a row, the longest such streak since 2006. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits has dropped to the lowest level since April 2008.
According to the AP poll of economists, conducted from Dec. 14 through 20, the U.S. economy is expected to grow 2.4 percent next year. In 2011, it likely grew less than 2 percent. The economists expect the country to create 177,000 jobs a month through Election Day 2012. That would be up an average 132,000 jobs a month so far in 2011.
But shoppers still face many hurdles. In fact, while the job market is steadily improving, unemployment — at 8.6 percent — is still high. And housing remains wobbly. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of home prices, also released Tuesday, dropped in October in 19 of the 20 cities it tracks. It was a second straight declining month, further evidence of a bumpy housing recovery
Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, noted renewed fears about a second recession hurt confidence last summer.
"While consumers are ending the year in a somewhat more upbeat mood, it is too soon to tell if this is a rebound from earlier declines or a sustainable shift in attitudes," Franco. "Have we rebounded from a summer lull or are we turning the corner?"
In fact, even with the increase in confidence, shoppers have been focused on deals this holiday season. Shoppers, enticed by expanded hours and bargains, packed stores for the start of t holiday season, resulting in discount-fueled record spending, but then retreated for a few weeks to wait for better deals.
Based on a stronger-than expected start and rising optimism that more spending was to come in the finale, The National Retail Federation upgraded its holiday sales growth forecast to 3.8 percent, from the original forecast of 2.8 percent made in September. More data will be released this week that will help quantify the last-minute sales surge.

Of course, the big question is how all the discounting will affect stores' profit margins. But in one good sign, Roxanne Meyer, a retail analyst at UBS Investment Research, says that overall post-Christmas markdowns were not as deep as expected, with less than half of major retailers increasing promotionals from last year.

(Reuters) – Wide receiver Braylon Edwards has been released by the San Francisco 49ers after an injury plagued season where he had only 15 receptions in eight games.

The former Cleveland Browns and New York Jets receiver injured his right knee in the second game of the season at Dallas.

"I was released today by the 49ers due to my injury that required more time to rehab and hasn't allowed me to re-sync with the offense. I wish the 49ers organization the best of luck during the playoffs. I will be working hard this off season to strengthen my knee and prepare for the 2012 season," Edwards said in a statement on his website.

Edwards was nearing the end of his one year contract with the 49ers who will now likely look to add a receiver to their roster ahead of Sunday's game at St. Louis where they hope to clinch the second seed in the NFC.

Drafted by the Browns as a first round pick in the 2005 draft, Edwards was a Pro Bowl selection in 2007 after putting up 1,289 yards.

(Editing by Justin Palmer)