Dive Brief:

• Sears stock shot up in value last week at the news that it may sell some of its formidable real estate holdings.

• The once-iconic American retailer is struggling mightily, but spinning off much of its property could bring it as much as $1.9 billion. Affected stores — some 300 —  would be leased back to Sears.

• Many investors advocated the move a decade ago when Sears and Kmart first merged at the behest of now-CEO Eddie Lampert.

Dive Insight:

A spin-off of Sears properties could have made some strategic sense a decade ago —​ it was a good time then to take stock of such assets in light of its merger with Kmart. Instead, in the past decade the retailer has failed in its upkeep of many of its stores, and this proposal now looks more like another Hail Mary move to momentarily keep the operations afloat.