J.C.Penney Shows Not All Retail Is Weaker

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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J.C.Penney Company, Inc. (JCP-NYSE) is proving that the retail environment isn’t all bad in all areas.  The company posted $1.04 EPS vs. $1.03 estimates, although revenues were $4.35 billion vs. $4.39 billion estimates.

Its same store sales were up 2.2% and gross margin improved 0.7% to 41.5%.  It’s putting next quarter guidance at $0.80 EPS (before $0.03 for debt retirement) versus estimates of $0.79; and it has raised fiscal guidance by about 1% from $5.44 EPS to a new number of $5.49.

The company has been doing well with its new lingere sales, but it’s new Ralph Lauren concepts are seeming to help as well.  Shares are up 3% to $78.00 in early trading.  Obviously Joe Q. Public isn’t tapped out everywhere.

This is why Jim Cramer named Mike Ullman as one of his Top 9 Retail CEO’s earlier, and it’s probably a safe bet that Cramer will be out saying great things about JC Penney today.  The ‘Penney’ may be spelled differently, but since this stock is up 4-fold in the last five years maybe the company should change their name to JC Dollars.

Jon C. Ogg
May 17, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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