Dive Brief:

• Sears hit back after the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch reported that its vendors were jittery about getting paid on time.

• CFO Rob Schriesheim said that, to the contrary, the retailer is happy to pay vendors more quickly in exchange for discounts and said that was hardly a bad thing for any company.

• Schriesheim also said the company is moving forward with its plans to leverage its considerable real estate holdings into an investment trust, a move that could be complete by June 1 and that could help garner the company needed cash flow.

Dive Insight:

So many have been anticipating the fall of Sears for so long that any false move, or perception of a false move, is easily interpreted as finally the end. But not everyone thinks that Sears is in too deep to dig itself out. 

Certainly, Schriesheim fought back on the reports this week on the company blog, noting that the retailer has cut Q4 inventory levels over the past three years by $1.4 billion and payables by $712 million, reducing the credit and vendor patience.

"We have 50,000 suppliers and vendors. Providers of insurance have never had to pay a claim to any vendor tied to SHC's business. What does that mean?” Schriesheim writes. “We are paying our vendors and meeting our obligations as we always have. Vendors who spent their own money to hedge against non-payments did nothing more than decrease their profits."