Sears Holdings has lost $7.1 billion in the last four fiscal years, including $1.7 billion last year. Despite those abysmal financial figures, Sears CEO Edward Lampert remains confident that the company can transform its strategic model, largely buoyed by its Shop Your Way loyalty program.
“I’ve said many times that one of my regrets in helping steer Sears and Kmart over the last decade is that we haven’t had or generated the money to fund our transformation quickly enough,” Lampert wrote in his blog on Tuesday before the company’s annual general shareholders meeting . “While operational performance has been the cause of some of that, pension expenses, the recession and other factors have impacted us as well.”
What’s more, Lampert wrote that the company has generated $2.4 billion of liquidity from asset reconfiguration and financing activities.
“These included the Lands’ End spinoff, short-term loans that were secured by some of our real estate, a Rights Offering for 40 million Common Shares in Sears Canada, and a Rights Offering for Senior Unsecured Notes with Warrants,” he wrote. “We also completed a range of real estate transactions that generated additional liquidity for the company. These $2.4 billion in funds from last year put us on better footing for the future, allaying any stray stakeholder concerns about us having enough money for the near future and allowing us to fund our company’s transformation much faster.”
Lampert wrote that the Real Estate Investment Trust transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of this year. 
“Sears and Kmart have already moved beyond the old and sorely outdated traditional store network models,” Lampert wrote. “Every day, we are building richer, deeper relationships with our members through Shop Your Way, Buy Online Pickup In Store, In-Vehicle Pickups & Returns, Digital Kiosks, and more. By raising such substantial capital in 2014 and 2015, we’ll now be able to accelerate our company’s transformation.”
The Shop Your Way loyalty program accounts for a staggering 74% of sales.
In February, Lampert said that “at the core of this transformation is a change in perspective. We are shifting from being product-centric to member-centric, from transacting with customers to building relationships with our members, from focusing on driving our customers to our store network, to building Integrated Retail capabilities that leverage the store network to create solutions that allow us to better serve our members.”
Lampert said the company’s member-centric Integrated Retail model is built on the foundation provided by two separate and distinct platforms: Shop Your Way and Integrated Retail, the technology platform that connects members to the Sears integrated ecosystem of retail channels and member touch points.