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Seritage Growth Properties looks to sell off all assets

The company’s board recommends a plan to sell properties as it faces down from Berkshire Hathaway

From left: Seritage Growth Properties' former chairman Eddie Lampert and current CEO and president Andrea Olshan (Getty Images, Columbia Business School - Columbia University, LoopNet, Seritage Growth Properties, iStock)
From left: Seritage Growth Properties' former chairman Eddie Lampert and current CEO and president Andrea Olshan (Getty Images, Columbia Business School - Columbia University, LoopNet, Seritage Growth Properties, iStock)

Sears spinoff Seritage Growth Properties could sell all of its assets and dissolve as its deadline to pay off a loan from Warren Buffett’s firm nears.

The company’s board has recommended a plan to liquidate its properties and return the proceeds to shareholders, according to a proxy filing released on Thursday.

The plan requires a two-thirds vote from shareholders, but it is already about halfway there. Eddie Lampert, the former chairman of Seritage, exchanged his equity in the company for shares and agreed to vote for the plan. Lampert now owns about 29 percent of the company’s outstanding Class A shares, according to the proxy filing.

The company’s stock shot up by more than 70 percent on the news.

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Seritage was spun out of the troubled Sears department store in 2015. In March, the company announced it would seek strategic alternatives, including a possible sale, and that Lampert would step down. The company also transitioned from a real estate investment trust to a C corporation.

As of March, the company had interests in 161 properties and 19 million square feet of leasable area. The company said it no longer has any exposure to Sears or Kmart leases.

Sears recently tapped CBRE to sell a 38-property, multi-state portfolio to pay off a $1.44 billion loan from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway maturing in June 2023, according to CoStar.

Seritage also announced on Friday that it appointed Adam Metz as chairman of its board of trustees. Metz was appointed to the board in March and was a former managing director at Carlyle Group.

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