J.C. Penney on Thursday despatched sales that missed analysts’ expectations, blaming the declines on a cooler start to the emerge season. The department store chain also cut its full-year earnings opinion.
Its shares tumbled more than 10 percent, falling farther down than $3 apiece, on the news.
Revenues fell about 4.3 percent to $2.58 billion during the prime quarter ended May 5, missing a Thomson Reuters estimate for $2.61 billion.
Same-store transaction marked downs rose 0.2 percent but this was also short of analysts’ foresee for roughly 2 percent growth.
Penney’s net loss narrowed to $78 million, or 25 cents per parcel, from $187 million, or 60 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time notes, it lost 22 cents a share, 1 cent better than the 23 cent passing analysts were expecting.
The retailer adjusted its full-year earnings-per-share perspective to be between a loss of 7 cents to earnings of 13 cents. That set side by sides with prior guidance of earnings 5 to 25 cents a share.
CEO Marvin Ellison voiced in a statement: “Although our overall top line sales results came in less our expectations for the quarter, we were encouraged by the strong positive comp effectuation throughout February and March, as well as the last two weeks of April, when temperatures began to control.”
Penney said its strongest categories of late include jewelry, Sephora and its salon proprietorship, as has been the trend.
Still, the company has been grappling with direction to fix its apparel business, which has lost share to Amazon and more labels selling directly to consumers.
Penney’s first-quarter results are in stark contrast to those of Macy’s, which backfire a much stronger start to the year, sending its shares up more than 10 percent.
Consumer investing overall in the U.S. has been picking up, fueling optimism in the retail industry and be in aid ofing many retailers’ stocks in recent days. Shares of Penney had made Wednesday up more than 5 percent, on the heels of the better-than-expected results from Macy’s.
“[W]e remember JCP can clear as the year progresses — as long as initiatives in Women’s Apparel, Effectively, Beauty, Digital, and others take hold,” Cowen & Co. analyst Oliver Chen indicated earlier this year. “We like steps JCP has taken over the olden times year to grow its digital business through investments in infrastructure, technology, and supervision.”
Like its peers, Penney has been looking for ways to trim supererogation costs and create a shopping experience that blends bricks and mortar with e-commerce. It’s been acrimonious back on discounting and has started fulfilling and shipping online orders from markets, for examples.
It also announced a round of hundreds of job cuts in March.
Penney’s begetter has lost more than 40 percent from a year ago, bringing its customer base capitalization under $1 billion.
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