By Teresa Rivas

And then there were two.

Macy's and Dillard's are the only publicly traded traditional, mall-based department stores now that Nordstrom's has gone private.

JWN is no more. After years of will-they-or-won't-they speculation and failed deals, the Nordstrom family finally found a buyer for their Seattle-based retail chain -- and the stock was delisted on Wednesday.

The acquisition, announced near the end of last year, is an all-cash acquisition priced at $24.25 a share in partnership with Mexican department store operator El Puerto de Liverpool, S.A.B. de C.V. The Nordstrom family will own 50.1% of the company and Liverpool will own the other 49.9%.

The Nordstrom family had owned about a third of Nordstrom's shares outstanding and Liverpool had owned approximately 10%. The deal, which shareholders signed off on earlier this month, includes a special dividend of 25 cents.

That's a far cry from the $50 per-share offer the family had made in 2018. Then again, the retail landscape has essentially been transformed. One of the few constants is the incredibly shrinking footprint of the department store.

Today, just Macy's and Dillard's are the stocks for those who want to invest in the true traditional department store.

Once a mainstay of American retail, department stores were KO'd by e-commerce and discounters like TJ Maxx and Marshalls.

Most went down for the count -- remember Barney's? -- though a few of the old names got back up but are beyond dazed. J.C. Penney and Sears operate a handful of stores postbankruptcy, and Lord and Taylor and Mervyns live online only.

So it's up to Macy's and Dillard's to carry on the fight.

Macy's has never retaken its 2015 all-time high. The stock is down about 40% in the past year, leaving it with a market cap of $3.3 billion. An accounting error that paid executives too much didn't help. Only 14 analysts tracked by FactSet still cover the stockand 70% of them rate it at Hold or the equivalent.

Dillard's, with a market cap of $6.4 billion, actually has a stronger punch. True, only four analysts track the stock and not one is bullish on it. But the stock has defied the naysayers, hitting all-time highs earlier this year. The company's one-two combo of cost discipline and focus on higher-margin categories is allowing it to deliver a string of better-than-expected results.

Kohl's is sometimes counted as department-store stock. However, the company has always favored off-mall locations. For a time, that strategy, along with partnering with Amazon.com to accept its returns, allowed it to outperform other department stores.

In the past year, though, stock has lost more than two-thirds of its value -- hurt by the firing of its CEO and disappointing results. The company lost a chance to be acquired for more than $60 a share in 2022, and now changes hands for $8.

Life for department stores is rough -- and has been for the past decade. Maybe even longer. The American shopper wants to buy online and get rock-bottom prices, which explains the rise of the discounter.

Even catering to the well-to-to hasn't shielded those great retailers, as evidenced by companies like Neiman Marcus and Henri Bendel.

So Macy's and Dillard's are left to go it alone. Nordstrom keep getting jabbed at by shifting tastes and tariffs and online stores -- both here and abroad -- but at the least it won't have to share the details of that fight every quarter.

Write to Teresa Rivas at teresa.rivas@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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May 21, 2025 15:22 ET (19:22 GMT)

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