A former titan in the department store market is licking its wounds on the eve of completing its first recovery year.
J.C. Penney faced third quarter losses of 298 percent and year-to-date losses of 229 percent compared to 2012, as illustrated in the annotated document below. Stock prices have spiraled down more than 80 percent in the past two years.
The only hope for the retailer may be to declare bankruptcy on hundreds of stores, says Columbia business professor and former Sears CEO Mark Cohen.
They can choose whether or not they face the closures head on and begin anew, or remain in denial and be “forced into bankruptcy without regards to whether or not they can ever come out.”
Though the company announced mid-January that it will close 33 stores for a projected savings of 65 million, Cohen isn’t confident that will be enough.
“There are various financial analysts who are opining about how they can get the four to five billion dollars back. They’re getting some of it back, but they need to get most of it back, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
What began as a brand revitalization exercise wound up doing serious damage to the company that had been sleeping at the wheel for quite some time.
“The prior management of J.C. Penney—the management led by Mike Ullman—before Ron Johnson showed up had basically driven the company off the road into a ditch. It wasn’t catastrophic, but it resulted in the fact that the business was basically going nowhere.” Cohen said.
After several years of stagnating numbers, the company hired Johnson, former Apple senior vice-president of retail operations, to replace Ullman as CEO. Johnson had recently garnered attention with his retail strategies for Apple, which included the concept for the Apple retail store and Genius Bar. Prior to Apple, Johnson was vice president of merchandising for Target where his Michael Graves housewares line pioneered the long list of Target collaborations that have come to define the chain.
Johnson entered the company to fanfare and his vision for the store resulted in a 24 percent increase in stock price upon its announcement in January 2012.
High hopes were dashed within the year after Johnson’s installation of hip, upscale shops within the JC Penney alienated old customers and failed to attract new. The company endured losses of nearly one billion dollars and a revenue drop of 25 percent.
Johnson was fired in April 2013 and replaced by Ullman.
Though Ullman is optimistic about the company’s growth, third quarter numbers suggest that the company hold its applause, and Cohen agrees. Their gross margin—the difference in what the company pays for goods and what they sell them for—remains low.
“Their margins were declining when Mike Ullman was running the thing the first time—what is it that suggests that he has some sort of magic potion that will enable him to get back, let alone become prosperous in that regard?”
Ullman said in a statement issued alongside the results that he was proud of the company’s progress and that their “strategies to reconnect with customers are beginning to take hold.”
When compared to the year-to-date financials from the 2012 third quarter report, it would appear that J.C. Penney is indeed recovering. In 2012, the company’s net income plummeted by 566 percent.
Cohen says that the best the company can hope for is to be back where it began, which may not be worth hoping for.
“The right answer of course is that if they are successful, they will merely bring themselves back to that mediocre place that wasn’t going anywhere in the first place.”
The company reiterated their positive outlook after the holiday season, but January’s store closure announcement suggests that the annual report may tell a different story.
Its release has yet to be announced.