Sears Holdings Corporation (SHLD), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), eBay Inc (EBAY): 2 Numbers You Should See Before Investing in This Retailer

Crunching the numbers

Here’s a bonus statistic: -13%. That’s Sears’ stock performance over the past year. Over the same period the market has returned over 20%. Other retailers (ie: Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY)) have used the recovering economy to report near-record revenue.

Source: Author’s calculations

To sum up

Sears became America’s hallmark retailer through its mail order catalogs. Today, that goes by a different name: the Internet. Without any differentiating characteristics, I doubt Sears will be able to significantly grow its business in that segment.

Worse yet, I fear that Sears might focus too much on its online store and lose sight of its revenue-driving retail stores. Unless Sears can reinvent its online sales, this retailer is headed towards a different number: 11. As in Chapter 11.

Joshua Sauer has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Amazon.com and eBay. The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com and eBay.

The article 2 Numbers You Should See Before Investing in This Retailer originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Marie Palumbo.

Marie is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

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