a near term up/down point will be on the 28th by 4 p.m. that's the deadline for submission of definitive bids.
while esl submitted a stalking horse bid, esl was neither "the approved" nor "one of the approved" stalking horse bidders. as such, esl was not a qualified bidder.
esl has until the 28th to submit an acceptable financing plan. if it is unable to do so, shldq has indicated it will proceed with a piecemeal breakup.
in anticipation that esl might not be able to come up with an acceptable plan, shldq has announced that another group of stores is being considered for closure (50-80) stores.
the store components of esl's stalking horse bid are most likely all of those laid out in the exhibit to the lazard letter contained in docket 862.
based on the way they were presented, it seems like stores 1-381 are probably leased locations and the remaining 382-505 are owned. i am basing this on a cross reference to a simon objection which included a list of simon malls containing sears owned and eased locations. since all of the sears "owned" stores in the simon list were in the 382-505 range it seems that was the "owned store" range.
lampert's esl owns over 40% of sears considering both stock and bonds. he has a huge incentive to come up with a viable financing plan. his prior offering was received as smoke and mirrors based primarily on the fact a $ 1.8 billion portion of it involved rolling over his bond position. that was not received well by other credit holders. seems shldq wants a cash backstop from esl.
from reviewing the legal bills in the docket, shldq has spent a considerable amount of time and money looking at restructuring, valuation, solvency and the seritage issues. lampert wants to be indemnified from any litigation associated with (at a minimum) the seritage transaction and shldq is wanting to be sure they have no d&o liability for these issues.
another interesting thing noted in the legal filings was time spent reviewing a "reit" structure. have no way of knowing whether or not they were attempting to assess part of a lampert offer or if they were possibly considering making a "corporate" bid for the assets with the thought of creating a reit.
the last thing noted about the legal bills was a lot of time spent assessing whether or not shldq could be parsed out as a "going concern" which is part of the basis for the lazard list of properties characterized as the "go-forward" properties.
one thing seems to be certain, there are a number of parties interested in picking at the carcass of sears. if esl wants any hope of being in control of its 40+% interest, it needs to get and present a plan by friday at 4 p.m. if not, a long drawn out liquidation will be the result and while there will be ups and downs in the stock for a little while, this will probably soon settle to zero.
since sears represented to the bk judge its preference was to sell the company on some sort of "going concern" basis (citing the preservation of 50k - 60k jobs), if esl can come up with a viable financing plan by the end of the week, i believe the judge will be under a lot of pressure to accept such a plan based on sears original bk filing.
if esl comes up with a viable financing plan and is awarded the deal, i believe lampert might try to create a reit, sell the lower valued properties via the reit, and then over time the others. may be cynical, but the "save the jobs" component will probably not be at the top of lampert's list if he has the winning bid. unlike ggp which had the infrastructure in place to continue operating its malls after it emerged from bk, lampert has not shown any ability to figure out the sears riddle. while there are many opportunities, continuing as a department store chain is probably not the most likely.
if esl or anybody else submits a definitive bid on the 28th, then the deadline to notify those prospective bidders if their bids are qualified is 4 p.m. on january 4th.
if there are more than one qualified bidders, then there will be an auction at 10 a.m. on january 14.
so, it appears esl must submit a qualifing financing package to be considered the lone staling horse bidder or win an auction among bidders. if neither of those things happen, esl is out of the game.
again, piecemeal sale and stock goes to worthless or esl steps up and stock is in play.
