J.C. Penney Rockets on Short Covering

The only way J.C. Penney stock is worth 20% more today is if you believe the company has really started its turnaround. Or you just have to cover your short position because this stock is ultimately going to dip even further.

Let’s look at the first possibility. The earnings per share loss was lower than expected, but revenues were also lower. The full-year earnings per share loss was more than $2 a share more than the prior year’s loss, and revenues were down more than $1 billion year-over-year.

A believer in the beginning of the turnaround could point to the 2% same-store sales growth in the quarter, but that was less than half the 4.3% growth estimate from research firm Retail Metrics. First-quarter same-store sales are forecast by the company to rise 3% to 5%, but it says only that “gross margins will improve.”

The company’s sales have been down for so long that anything looks like up. What we saw Wednesday is only “up” relatively, and what we can expect to see in the first quarter is also “up” only in the strict sense that it will not be worse than the first quarter of last year.

More than 42% of J.C. Penney stock was held short on February 14. That 42% is not bailing out today, they are covering their bets.

The stock traded at $7.36 in the late morning, up 23.6%, in a 52-week range of $4.90 to $19.63. More than twice the daily average of about 30 million shares had traded hands already.