Sears Is About To Take Its Last Gasp – Here’s How You’ll Profit

Unless there really is a Santa Claus, Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD) is going to seek bankruptcy protection.

It’s only a matter of time. And that time is running out, quickly.

Billionaire hedgie Eddie Lampert, who besides running his namesake ESL Investments fund also runs Sears Holdings as its chairman and CEO, just put another $200 million into Sears last month.

That brings his Fund’s helping hand, I mean handout, to a tad more than $2 billion!

Poor Sears was once the Amazon of its day. Now, it’s not only a dinosaur; it’s already dead.

We’re going to do a little grave dancing before the obituary arrives.

Here’s how much of a mess SHLD already is, and how you can profit from its extinction…

Hell Will Break Loose Any Day Now

To be clear, that ESL $200 million went to Sears USA, not Sears Canada.

You know Sears Canada, don’t you? The Canadian unit of Sears was spun out of Sears Holdings back in 2014 in a financial engineering move that, presumably, attempted to save both units’ lives.

That didn’t work out so well. Sears Canada declared bankruptcy this past summer. It has until November 7th to get itself out from under the protective blanket covering it, and then all hell breaks loose.

Sears Canada’s CEO recently split from the company to assemble an investor group (hopefully with some private equity swashbucklers) to make a bid to buy the company out of bankruptcy.

So far, with the clock ticking, they’ve got nothing. In fact, the race is practically over, and there’s no deal.

Creditors want to immediately close and liquidate eleven stores in Canada to get paid what they’re owed. Taking those eleven stores down kills the former CEO’s chances.

ESL owns 45% of Sears Canada… but it’s even worse than it sounds. Eddie Lampert-controlled entities own close to half of Sears Holding’s (SHLD) equity (what’s left after Sears Canada was spun out) and holds more than $1.7 billion of Sears’ debt.