Gary Strauss

USA TODAY

Cash-strapped Sears Holdings rose 4.5% to $35.95 Thursday following a report that it plans to close 116 Sears and Kmart stores and lay off nearly 6,100 employees, many ahead of the Christmas shopping season.

Seeking Alpha, a financial news and market tracker, cited liquidation sale notices sent out last month that will lead to the closure of 55 Kmart stores, 30 Sears department stores and 31 Sears Auto Centers.

Many of the stores are in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana, according to Seeking Alpha, but closures are also set for stores in Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Sears shares surged 23% after the company announced Monday that it planned to raise $625 million in a debt rights offering to raise cash and lease seven Sears store locations to European retailer Primark. Under CEO Edward Lampert, who's also the company's largest shareholder, Sears has lost nearly $1 billion this year.

After cutting nearly 100 stores in the first half of 2014, the company had nearly 800 Sears stores and 1,100 Kmart stores.

In an email to USA Today, Sears spokesman Howard Riefs said the store count and closures "isn't accurate,'' but did not provide store closures or layoff numbers.

"As we stated in our (second quarter earnings report), we disclosed that we would be closing unprofitable stores as leases expire and in some cases will accelerate closings when it is economically prudent. And that we would consider closing additional stores during the remainder of the year,'' Riefs said. "Make no mistake, we believe the store will continue to play an integral role in our transformation, however, if a store is not generating a profit, it is straightforward that the store should be considered for closure."

"We will update our store count in our (third-quarter) financial results announcement later this year," Riefs said. "All of these closing stores have been previously notified, and their associates and teams advised."



Pressed further, Riefs said in subsequent email: "We're not going to go store by store since we don't do that outside our quarterly results."

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