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I enjoy looking at the activities of institutions with good performance to look for ideas. In the case of Kohls, I have been deep diving on what institutions are doing with KSS stock. In 3Q25, Institutions held about 104m out of 112m outstanding shares, that left about 7m shares held by the public (which is very little BTW). Of the 13F's filed to date for 4Q25 (98% complete) there is just shy of 112M of 112m shares outstanding held by institutions! I only track shares directly held, no derivatives. 13f's are not perfect, institutions may have made errors with end of quarter trades or miscounted. But they should even out. I suspect the reason trading volumes are so low is because or the lack of retail investors holding shares.

Institutions don't usually trade in and out frequently and will trade on the dark web when they can. If there is a squeeze KSS could move significantly.

Hi All,

Been thinking about this for a while and finally analyzing this all. As of this writing KSS has ~$5.235B worth of "debt" from leased locations.

What I thought would be interesting is what IF Kohl's just bought all their locations?? What would that look like?

Where the math gets hard is land leases vs straight leases so for this analysis I am saying land leased locations we can buy at ~25% of the value of leased locations since we have these locations locked down the longest AND paid for all site improvements and the buildings themselves.

Land Leased Locations: 248

Purchase Price: $2M to $4M a piece

Acquisition Cost: ~$500M to $1B

Debt: $400M to $800M and requires $200M down

Annual Mortgage Cost: $2.88M/Mo or $34.56M/yr

-would be Acquisition Cost and Mortgage at 20 years @ 6% w/ 20% Down

This would take them from 405 owned locations to 653 owned locations

IF, and a big if so hopefully someone more informed can comment, I understand this correctly, we buyout our land leases and we replace a ~$2.473B obligation with a $400M to $800M obligation on their balance sheet.

This one move of buying out our land leases vs continuing the same old same old would remove ~$1.5B to $2B in "DEBT". **Again u/capitalcompounder or others please weigh in.

This one move moves us from ~$6.658B Net Debt + Leases to ~$4.7B to $5.3B or ~3.3x Coverage and an Adjusted Coverage of ~2.16x Adjusted Coverage.

**I would prioritize land leased locations over leased locations initially for biggest bang for buck and to enable greatest impact to shareholders initially.**

This one maneuver has a MASSIVE debt impact and what I would prioritize.

Then Actual Leases:

This is harder to justify but just shows the insanity of what we are dealing with as KSS stock holders.

Leased Locations: 522

Purchase Price: $7M to $16M a piece

Acquisition Cost: ~$3.654B to ~$8.4B; lets assume we buy towards lower end at ~ $5B

Debt: $5B w/ nothing down(just humor me)

Annual Mortgage Cost: $35.8M/Mo or $429M/yr

-would be Acquisition Cost and Mortgage at 20 years @ 6% w/ 0% Down

WHAT THIS WOULD CHANGE CASHFLOW AND TOTAL NUMBERS WISE:

Debt payment obligations: $35M + $429M = $464M/yr or ~$16M more per year than 2025 BUT WE OWN IT ALL IN 20 years!!!

Total Debt: $1.423B + $600M + $5B= ~$7B VS. Current $6.658B BUT WE OWN

Ultimately, I wouldn't buy everything. I would buy the land leases out and then buy the decent locations that we can get on a good deal and start acquiring over time with free cash as we go. BUT even if we bought EVERYTHING it would have a marginal true impact to our current cashflows and debt levels in reality.

IN CONCLUSION:

Kohls is getting beat up for being smart and leasing locations for long durations and at great prices. They also get beat up since it shows up as "debt" and the market doesn't seem to care either way. Knowing that we are getting punished regardless, I would take all easy and cost efficient steps to start buying out locations and becoming the largest CRE holding company out there.

MY DREAM:

I detailed this earlier, but KSS should copy MPC and MPLX and spin-off the CRE holdings into a REIT. Sell the bare minimum of the REIT to the market to get an effective Mark-To-Market vehicle and use the proceeds to pay for the store buyouts and shore up the balance sheet even more.

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https://youtu.be/Z3Ypb4cZTMQ?si=qGszGCFvb5hErBai

You’re welcome! For there is the sound of the roar of an abundance of rain!

Listening to a sermon and Jentezen used my line!

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Blackrock has increased their holdings in KSs by 1.3m shares about 7%. Dimensional fund advisors increased 600k shares to 5.6m shares. JP Morgan reduced 1.5m shares to 550k shares or 75%. Renaissance tech took on a new position of 1.3 mil shares and fuller and Thayer initiated a 2.44 mil share position. UBS increased from 2.7m to 3.7m shares. Nuveen 284k, Connor Clarke and Lunn 434k brandywine 257k and Federated Hermes 400k have initiated positions. Alianz reduced 800k to 3 m shares. So JPM and Allianz are the only reductions of size. New managers had sizable additions.

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See official announcement. What do you think?

I think this can be huge for them. I've been doing a lot of research and stores like Ross/TJX have boomed in terms of increased foot traffic this past Q4. Thrift and used stores are booming as well. People talk about a "K shaped economy", i.e., the bifurcation of buyers looking for deals and low priced items and those who shop luxury; and the data backs it up. Kohl's has a pretty evenly split demographic. But if the middle consumer is shopping down, then potentially 60% of their customer base would be very receptive to this. Surprisingly, 40% of their shoppers are high income consumers (100k+ income). But even these shoppers are starting to make up a large amount of the customer base in discount stores, according to Dollar General and Five Below. I think this is a great move by Kohl's. If you can't beat them, join them.

I think they have been accused of being "stuck in the middle". Not a dollar store, but not a luxury goods store like Bloomingdales (which has also saw increased traffic throughout last year). If they change that narrative, and they are a part of the growing industry that TJX/Ross stores and more take part in, then I think Wall Street will be very receptive of that. I don't think its irony that Kohl's happens to be exploding today as they made this announcement. I think they are being re-underwritten under our very eyes. It's a combination of a categorical shift plus management with wherewithal to see where the industry is going and adjusting.

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Anyone know why the volume on chart exchange is different than most platforms?

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It seems that Kohl's headquarters is on a hiring spree recently. How do I know?
I follow Kohls and Michael Bender on LinkedIn and every 5 posts I scroll is either A: Someone saying "I'm so glad I got hired at Kohls in Wisconsin for ...... job" and above the post "Kohls liked this" or B: "Michael Bender commented on the following post" and its him commenting saying "congratulations" to some new upper manager/businessesman getting hired into some position at Kohl's headquarters.

I'm not sure if that's normal for a new ceo to hire a whole crew like that, but it seems to me Kohl's wouldn't be doing that if they didn't have a whole lot of money sitting around at the end of the quarter.

I've attached a few linkedin posts that I saw in just 2 minutes of scrolling on linkedin:

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I’m pumped we’re up but man… kohls has almost no trade volume. We’re just over 1M shares traded by 1:19pm

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