Nobody wants to be criticized. Any company or research firm that goes against the grain is going to be criticized.

This would be statistically more significant if the company had flat revenues.

It's not that unusual in the context of Bill Wrigley taking over where there might be some unanticipated personality clash. Given the fact that there's no stated explanation, there might be some type of clash in philosophy or idea about strategy. It's a little sudden, for sure.

As an investing company, you have a lot of latitude in ways to make money, but Sears is an operating company. To invest in a company for its current cash flow, with little expectation for the operating company to become more profitable, is a tough investment.

Benchmarking, generally, is far from a science. When you're talking about private company benchmarking, there are well-known limitations to the gathering and use of that data.

Business owners overstate the constraints. People don't understand that they are not going to lose clients over a stringent accounts receivable policy.