Sears And Kmart Closing Locations

The trend of retail chain store closures in the U.S. continues, with Sears and Kmart part of the latest such news.

Earlier this week, Sears Holdings Corp. announced that, as a cost-cutting measure, it will be closing a number of Sears and Kmart stores throughout the country, reports Reuters.

“We are going to be closing some Kmart and Sears stores in various cities across the country. It is a very small percentage of our overall number of stores,” company spokesman Howard Riefs told the newswire, though he declined to state the specific number of locations that will be affected.

“Every year, we evaluate our store portfolio and make changes based on leases or stores with poor performance,” added Riefs.

The Reuters story notes that, as of the end of October, Sears Holdings — according to its latest financial disclosure — counted 952 Kmart stores and 735 Sears stores among its assets and that Riefs said that, between the two chains, most of the closures would affect Kmart.

Additionally, shares the newswire, revenue at stores that have been open more than year (as of last month) fell 9.6 percent at Sears and 7.5 percent at Kmart during Q3 last year, drops that the company attributed to slow sales in apparel.

It is expected that Sears will announce its Q4 results — which, as the Reuters story notes, include the vital holiday shopping season — in late February. Riefs told the newswire that Sears has not yet decided on the exact date of that announcement, however.