Sears Jumps on Store Spin-Off

Shares of Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) were active Monday after the company announced that it was planning to spin off select stores into a separate publicly traded entity. The stores to be spun-off include Sears Hometown and Outlet stores as well as some hardware stores. In afternoon trading on Monday, shares of Sears had jumped around 6 percent to $54.61.

There are a total of 1,238 Hometown, Outlet and hardware stores, according to Sears. In its SEC filing, Sears said that it expects to raise $346.5 million from the spin-off. The company will also be paid a $100 million cash dividend as part of the transaction. Previously, the company had said that it expected to raise between $400 and $500 million in the deal.

Sears Chairman Edward Lampert's ESL Investments will be a majority shareholder in the spun-off business. Sears is set to report its fiscal second-quarter earnings results on Thursday, August 16, prior to the opening bell.

Wall Street analysts are expecting the company to report a quarterly loss per share of $0.86. Revenues are expected to be $9.63 billion, implying year over year sales decrease of 6.8 percent. Over the last 3 months, Sears shares have lost a little less than 0.50 percent.