Up To 120 Sears and Kmart Stores To Close [AUDIO]

Sears Holdings Corporation, owners of both Sears and K-Mart Stores announced plans today to close many of their retail stores. Here is part of the news release from their corporate office in Chacago.

'Given our performance and the difficult economic environment, especially for big-ticket items, we intend to implement a series of actions to reduce on-going expenses, adjust our asset base, and accelerate the transformation of our business model. These actions will better enable us to focus our investments on serving our customers and members through integrated retail - at the store, online and in the home," said Chief Executive Officer Lou D'Ambrosio. Specific actions which we plan to take include:

Close 100 to 120 Kmart and Sears Full-line stores. We expect these store closures to generate $140 to $170 million of cash as the net inventory in these stores is sold and we expect to generate additional cash proceeds from the sale or sublease of the related real estate. Further, we intend to optimize the space allocation based on category performance in certain stores. Final determination of the stores to be closed has not yet been made. The list of stores closing will be posted at www.searsmedia.com when final determination is made.' Attached, find a voice-mail message from Sears Corporate Headquarters. I spoke with the Missoula K-Mart store manager and she referred me to the corporate office.