J.C. Penney Investors Face More Earnings Disappointment

The company gave guidance for the 2015 full year as comparable store sales increasing 3% to 5%, gross margin increasing 0.5% to 1%, and free cash flow expected to be flat. The consensus estimates call for a per share loss of $1.33 and $12.63 billion in revenue.

One could be forgiven for wondering how many chances investors are going to give J.C. Penney? On the conference call, CEO Mike Ullman said that something called “center-core initiatives pretty much don’t start until the fall season this year… .” Does that mean two more lousy quarters?

And the margin improvement for next year is 50 to 100 basis points? Revenues will have to rise like a rocket to have that paltry amount make any difference.

In January, J.C. Penney announced that during the December to November period, the company saw comparable store sales growth of 3.7% over the same period last year. The company also announced that it expected to report fourth-quarter comparable store sales at the upper end of its previous guidance range of 2% to 4%.

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Comparable store sales rose 4.4% for the quarter. Online sales through JCPenney.com were $428 million for the quarter, up 12.5% from the same period last year. Men’s apparel, Home and Fine Jewelry were the company’s top performing merchandise divisions during the quarter.

For the fourth quarter, gross margin improved 540 basis points to 33.8% of sales, compared to 28.4% in the same period last year. Gross margin was positively affected by significant improvement in the company’s merchandise mix and margin on clearance sales over the prior-year quarter.

Ullman said:

2014 was a successful year for JCPenney. Thanks to the hard work and outstanding execution by our teams, we significantly grew sales and gross margin and delivered on our goal to generate positive free cash flow, representing a $2.8 billion improvement over last year. I am extremely proud of all that has been accomplished to restore this great Company. We are back in the eyes of our customers, back running the business effectively and back on solid financial footing. We fully intend to build on this momentum and continue to significantly improve our business in 2015.

Shares of J.C. Penney closed Thursday up 1.5% at $9.12, but it is a different story Friday morning. Shares traded down nearly 11% at $8.12 in Friday’s premarket. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $8.16 and a 52-week trading range of $5.90 to $11.30.

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