Friday, July 21, 2006

Sears shareholder exiting; Third Avenue fund sells 250,000 shares

Since engineering the combination of Sears and Kmart last year, billionaire Edward Lampert has tried to convince investors that he intends to run the new company as a retailer.

Wall Street, for the most part, has turned a deaf ear, betting that Lampert will turn Sears Holdings Corp.'s massive real estate holdings into cash.

Perhaps he will, eventually. But one prominent real estate investor isn't waiting around to find out.

Michael H. Winer, portfolio manager of Third Avenue Real Estate Value Fund, cut his fund's Sears stake roughly by half in the quarter ended April 30 and expects to liquidate the rest of the holdings in January, according to Third Avenue's second-quarter letter to shareholders mailed in June. He sold 250,000 shares worth roughly $35 million.

The reason: a combination of an "attractive price"--about $140 a share; a fourteenfold increase from what the fund paid for them--and "our view that the company should be valued as a going concern, as opposed to the theoretical liquidation value," Winer wrote.

To read the complete article.

Thank you GuruFocus for this link.

Happy thinking,

Dah Hui Lau (David)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should do your homework and realize Martin Whitman is buying more stock in the main Third Avenue Fund. Martin Whitman is way more important than the real estate fund. If you did your homework you would see Whitman's track record is really impressive

Unknown said...

Hi there, I totally agree with you.... Marty Whitman is an excellent investor; no doubt about it.

Google