Been a while but you had to figure if the market tanked, Sears’ (SHLD) Eddie Lampert would be there buying.
Lampert and ESL Investments added another 165k shares in AutoZone (AZO).
Lampert paid between $95.50 and $103 a share.
He now holds almost 24 million shares.
Here is some background on the recent agreement between Lampert and AutoZone regarding his ownership.
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHLD, none
Visit the ValuePlays Bookstore for Great Investing Books
3 replies on “Lampert Buying More AutoZone”
Todd,
Interesting stuff. I would imagine though that at the pace he is buying it is going to take him probably another year or two to gain a controling stake in AZO (that is… after AZO completes the current buyback and Eddie buys the remaining percentage up to +50%.) What do you think he is planning with AZO? It seems like he is slowly increasing his stakes in both AZO and AN, which leads me to believe there might be something in the works with SHLD here. I have no idea what he’s going for, but it’s interesting to wonder.
anon,
here you go
http://valueplays.blogspot.com/2008/08/autonation-sears-and-autozone-getting.html
Todd,
Thanks for the link. Seems like you had a similar thought as I did of a combination at some point down the line. It is interesting to speculate on this as there are some nice compliments between each of the businesses, but I am not sure that I can even begin to imagine how Eddie could buy out AZO and AN with SHLD. SHLD has nowhere near the money needed to do that. AN has a smaller market cap, so I would assume that would be his first target… but AZO? I couldn’t imagine… How do you think he can possibly pull this off?