Posted on 09/14/2016 2:25:22 PM PDT by PROCON
Moody's analysts say Sears and Kmart don't have enough money — or access to money — to stay in business.
In a note published Wednesday, the analysts downgraded Sears' liquidity rating, saying the company is bleeding cash and will have to continue to rely on outside funding or the sale of assets, such as real estate, to sustain operations.
"We recognize the risks associated with relying on these sources and continued shareholder support to finance its negative operating cash flow which is estimated by Moody's to be approximately $1.5 billion this year," the analysts wrote.
Kmart in particular is at risk of shutting down, according to Moody's.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Sam Walton had a small Mom and Pop store, then he bought some bankrupt BEN FRANKLIN stores, and reorganized as WALMART.
Indeed it did. The writing had been on the wall since the early ‘90s. It may be that Kodak was just too big a ship to turn so suddenly. As it was, their new product pipeline was so long that by the time products went from R&D to the shipping dock, they were obsolete and noncompetitive.
Everyone could see it coming, but they were frozen in the headlights.
.
Sears used to make a ton on gun sales. When they discontinued guns their volume dropped by about 25%
One of the odd things to me is that Kodak was one of the earliest players in digital. I have no idea what happened but they somewhere lost their way.
Are they still in business?
They’ve shed most everything since going Chapter 11 in 2012.
No more sensitized products except for movie film. They plan to focus on the corporate digital imaging market, whatever the heck that is. IOW, she’s dead, Jim.
As a kid I used to shop at his store on the west side of the square in Bentonville, AR. It was later sold, became a book store, then an ice cream store, then restored to the original WALTON’S facade.
Before he opened his Bentonville store(WALTON’S) he had considered moving to downtown Siloam Springs Arkansas.
There was another 5&10 on the north west corner of the square, owned by someone else.
Walton’s = or became Walmart, then?
And I have a Sears boat (1965 15’ runabout). Love it!
Ha ha. I love her!
If someone wonders how many people are reading their comments...
That’s a sure way to find out.
Radio Shacks belly up dead everywhere. They could have had it all, if they had built smart phones, laptop and tablet computers. Run by stupid people. They had the factories, engineers, supply lines and retail stores, and frittered it all away. They could have made it with PCs in the 1980s, but as you say their Tandy computers sucked big time.
I don't know if Kodak is still around, but my wife has an early Kodak digital camera that uses 1.4MB floppy disks. Not even a megapixel resolution, about 2/3rds that? Stupid camera made worthless pictures.
At one time Kodak had a digital camera which was simply a Nikon N90s with a replacement digital back. The back itself was about as large as a large camera by itself.
It was a very fine camera but the digital back was only 1.3MP. At the time tho that was cutting edge and a whole lot of professional journalist photographers used them.
That was more than enough resolution for a newspaper photo.
An interesting fact was you could restore it to a film camera by simply putting an original film back on it. That was so early in digital that a lot of people did that.
“Everyone could see it coming, but they were frozen in the headlights.”
Me too.
Kodak had marvelous inventions in the lab that could have easily saved them, but their management was still living in the 19th Century.
I remember visiting their Rochester lab sometime in the 90’s at the height of their big copier business when they were actually beating Xerox because the Kodak machines were WAY more reliable.
We went to look at some OCR software they were developing to sell, but as I remember almost everybody had OCR just about done at the time, so no big whoop.
But we DID see a BIG 4-color copier that was revolutionary. This was at the time when smaller, Ethernet-attached printers were just starting to come out. So I was REALLY excited about what they had and suggested that if they just tacked on a rasterization engine and an Ethernet interface, they would have a world-beater of a product WAY ahead of the competition, even though they were just working on a high-speed, high-capacity model.
Well, our excitement was squelched faster than the Pointy-Head Boss could whip out a fire-hose when we were told that management wouldn’t allow what we suggested because the only market that MANAGEMENT could possibly imagine for that color copier were that CEO’s of the Fortune 500 companies might want one for their own offices so their secretaries could prepare color hand-outs for them for big meetings, like board meetings, etc., and the marketplace wouldn’t be much bigger than that for color copiers/printers.
I shook my head and absolutely knew right then and there on the spot that Kodak was going to go bankrupt, and it was just a matter of time.
True story.
You could even buy a car from Sears. The Allstate series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allstate_(automobile)
We had a neighbor in 1953-54 who drove a Henry J. It was a small car and I have never seen another one.
I keep looking around for a Henry J to make a Gasser out of. Big 671 GMC blower sticking out of he hood...
I’ll get to it right after I finish the 100000 other projects I have.
Yes you are absolutely correct, and I hadn’t thought about the possibility that they probably are rented facilities.
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