Sears Holdings (SHLD) Chairman Eddie Lampert bought more AutoZone (AZO).
In just released SEC filing, ESL Partners bought another 63.1k share bringing Lampert ownership to 23.3m shares.
This follows heavy buying last week.
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHLD, none
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8 replies on “4th Update…Lampert Buying More Autozone”
Why is he buying in such small amounts? “Small” considering the resources he has anyway. At this rate it is going to take him forever to get to 50%… probably more than a year.
anon,
don’t forget part his deal with them was them increasing their buyback, thereby raising his %. he may be not wanting to compete with them for shares.
only 1 million share a day trade. if he bought huge amounts, he would be bidding against himself
Hey Todd,
http://www.secinfo.com/dr8Pp.tgp.htm any thoughts on Eddie aquiring more SHLD shares for ESL? I noticed there wasn’t a price he paid can you explain
read the footnotes for the filing…
these share were held as part of trade claims from the BK. as these claims are settled, the shares are released to ESL.
Todd,
Based on the buyback and Eddie continuing to nibble at the shares on the open market, about how long do you think we are looking at before we see his next play? Do you think by the end of ’09 we will see AN and AZO swallowed up by SHLD?
I would think some combination of the three..
SHLD is a time bomb in this enviornment. Eddie is running out of time and cash to continue to prop up the stock. Hedge funds and people like Miller have to sell it and that is why the stock has been absolutely killed of late. It has been four years since the merger and Eddie has done nothing of substance to improve operations or diversify the business. All he has done is cut costs and improve short term profitability and bought back shares at more than 3x where they currently trade. The fact is that he already recouped his initial investment when he sold the stores to Sears and HD when the merger was announced for about $1 bil, so now he is basically just playing with other peoples money. The game is free at this point to him. He is out to make a point that he knows more about retail that you, me, Sam Walton, and everyone else. The whole Eddie is WEB thing pumped the heck out of this thing, but it is going to come to an ugly end. Eddie bought into his own hype and now he is backed into a corner… Make a move Eddie or it’s game over…
Pretty soon ESL’s biggest holding will be AZO not SHLD. Not even a Sears Bear could have seen that coming.