Hello all, and welcome to the weekend. First and foremost, some of you may have figured it out already, but the newsletter you got earlier on Friday wasn't the regular edition of the SmallCap Network newsletter. That was today's edition of the Under the Radar Movers newsletter, which was inadvertently sent to the wrong list. As much as I'd like to say it was a technical error that caused the snafu, I can't. It was me. I used the wrong list from our back-end mailing tool. In my defense though, despite getting a flu shot just a month ago, I've managed to contract a pretty good case of the flu and my head's been more than a little fuzzy all day. Think of my ailment as your gift. Of course, maybe the mis-send was a fortunate mistake. Perhaps some of you were wondering exactly what the Under the Radar Movers newsletter was, and looked like. Now you know. They're all a little bit different, but you more or less get the idea. It's simple and straight-forward, and you can get the newsletter every trading day for less than the price of a cup of coffee. In any case, don't worry. I'm pretty well medicated now, and I bounce back pretty quickly (and the flu shot is at least supposed to keep your misery to a minimum). Before I get a chance to forget, be sure to check your inbox on Monday morning, right at the open. We've got a new trading idea coming your way, and we're going to spill the beans then. We can't tell you much about it. We can tell you it's related to the advent of electric vehicles, but it's not an EV maker. It's also not a lithium miner... the material used to make the batteries that power electric vehicles. In fact, we'd be willing to bet this is a play on the rise of electric vehicles that most investors had never even realized was an opportunity. I'll also throw this in... a chart that underscores what's going on right now that makes this trading idea so compelling. The chart isn't of the stock suggestion we've got for you, but it may was well be. Like we said, just check your e-mail early Monday. This one's gonna be fun. OK, movin' on to the main event. You know, most of the time we make a point of not talking about individual stocks here in the newsletter. Today's going to be an exception though. As the subject line said, beleaguered retailer Sears Holding (SHLD) is fighting an uphill battle, and after Wednesday's earnings report was posted, it's tough to argue there's any hope here. That's actually not a new idea; plenty of people had already given up hope years ago, and understandably so. Sales have been deteriorating since 2007 -- in every single quarter -- and the company hasn't booked an operating profit since the fourth quarter of 2013. The losses are getting bigger too. Some supporters will point out sales are only falling because Sears is selling off pieces of itself, crimping its ability to sustain revenue, let alone grow it. Fair enough. Just for the record though... 1) Sears is selling off pieces of itself because it has to - not just because it wants to. Habitual losses are the reason Sears is in "divesting" mode. 2) All the remaining pieces of Sears are still losing ground. The last time the company saw any increase in same-store sales (which isn't impacted by all the asset sales) was the first quarter of 2010. Before that, the last same-store sales growth was about a decade ago. Fine, but none of this is exactly new, right? So what prompted me to get on my high horse today? One word.... well, acronym - EBITDA. Last quarter's EBITDA was all the convincing I needed that this company isn't going to be able to dig its way out of the hole it dug for itself. Here's the long and short of it, without boring you with too much math. Up until last quarter, though Sears; top line continued to shrink, over the course of the past few quarters we've broadly seen the EBITDA loss shrink as well. It offered a glimmer of hope that Sears could indeed work its way back to profitability. It simply had to keep shedding all the cancers and money pits it was trying to maintain, and pare itself down to just its profitable stores and profitable ventures. It wouldn't be easy, but there was a fair chance it could happen. Last quarter though, the EBITDA loss took a big step back (meaning it got bigger rather than smaller). It's the first time we've seen that happen under the umbrella of a new and improved Sears. Since I'm a chart guy, we'll use a chart to make this point in easy-to-understand terms. The chart below simply shows how big the EBITDA loss is as a percentage of total company revenue. EBITDA should be getting better relative to revenue, and at times it looked like it might be. Last quarter though, it all went south. Sears reported a whopping EBITDA loss of $375 million, or 7.5% of the company's revenue of $5.0 billion. There's something clearly wrong here, and for all intents and purposes it's going to be impossible to figure out a way to make up the EBITDA gap it's dealing with now. Never even mind the fact that the "ITDA" creates a even bigger drag on the bottom line. In other words, Sears is broken. If you want to know what happened to turn the EBITDA trend back in the wrong direction, at least part of the problem is lease payments it's now making for some of its stores that didn't exist before because Sears owned those stores outright. We talked about it at length back in February of last year and then brought up again in August of last year when we finally started to see the cost of those leases. Last quarter, rent payments took another $48 million away from EBITDA. Not that $48 million would have made a difference (Sears lost $333 million in Q3), but for a company that needs every penny's worth of profit it can get its hand on, it may well be the back-breaker. Moral of the story? Unless you know you can add $48 million worth of quarterly profits -- not revenue, but profits -- by committing to a monthly rent obligation that will never go away, you may not necessarily want to sell what you own only to lease it right back after you sell it. For some companies, it works. For Sears, it won't. Yet, the word is CEO Eddie Lampert is eyeing another $2.5 billion worth of asset sales to put some money in the bank now, despite creating another perpetual cost for the retailer. The company's not proven it can make good use of all this funding, and it's pocketed about $10 billion worth of it since 2012. It hasn't helped a bit. Things continue to worsen. The end seems to be near. In any case, that's it for today, and the week. Everyone have a great weekend, and don't forget to check your inbox right around the opening bell on Monday. This is a trading idea most people would have never found on their own.