Cramer: Why Sears Keeps on Rising

The story here has always been one of running the business for a profit and deploying cash through buybacks. This company is worth $23 billion after cash. That's ludicrous. The sales per share here amount to $340. J.C. Penney(JCP Quote), a company only slightly smaller, has sales per share of just $86. Federated(FD Quote), now Macy's -- also similarly sized -- comes in at $49. Home Depot(HD Quote), almost three times bigger, is $44. Lowe's(LOW Quote) is about twice as big yet has just $30 in sales per share.

On any metric -- sales, real estate, brand equity, whatever -- this store chain is cheap and Eddie Lampert still hasn't rationalized the darned business! He hasn't closed the overlapping stores, he hasn't sold real estate, he hasn't closed non-performers. That's bad; I don't like it. He hasn't even solved Sears Canada yet.

But that's in the future. And that's what matters.

I'm still not happy about the last quarter. But I'm going to stand pat with this, my third-largest position in the portfolio. With action like this, I'm happy to wait for this story to play out.