Thanks Fire. I believe you’re right.
I think the reason I made that mistake is because I thought ‘lots’ was an adverb and therefore couldn’t be the object of the action verb ‘has’. The preposition ‘of’ then was the object of ‘has’ which didn’t make sense so I thought ‘lots of’ might be an adverb similar to ‘at all’.
I can see that ‘lots’ is functioning as an indefinite pronoun (so can be the object of ‘has’). From that link:
When ‘a lot’ is used as a pronoun, it goes under the title of ‘indefinite pronouns’. It is a quantifier because it shows the amount or quantity of something, not definite, though.
(‘lots’ being an equivalent informal version of ‘a lot’)
I did notice initally that the dictionary listed it as a pronoun but I judged wrongly that it wasn’t. This was because I couldn’t think of what it was referring to and it didn’t feel pronouny. But I see that indefinte pronouns don’t refer to anything in particular.