Sears predicts major drop in sales

The parent company of Joplin Northpark Mall anchor Sears said Tuesday it expects its second quarter earnings to be well below original estimates:

It would be the second earnings miss in a row for the department store chain led by Chairman Eddie Lampert, a hedge-fund guru who acquired Kmart in 2003 and Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 2005.

With Lampert at the helm, many investors have regarded Sears as a hedge fund masquerading as a department store, and have been anxiously awaiting word from Lampert about a possible expansion that could turn around the company's fortunes. But while Sears' profits and stock price have fared well in the past two years, revenues have continued to sink.

"While investors have sought to value Sears as something other than a retailer, its recent results demonstrate that it is not immune to the current challenging sales environment impacting retailers with big-ticket home exposure," Goldman Sachs analyst Adrianne Shapira wrote in a research note.