JCPenney Tumbles Amid Report Company Is 'Taking Emergency Measures To Stay Afloat'

[Purveyor]

Source: Benzinga/NY Post

Shares of J C Penney Company Inc JCP 7.17% tumbled more than 7 percent early Friday morning after the New York Post reported that the retailer has been forced to take "emergency measures" to "stay afloat."

The New York Post, citing an internal memo it obtained, said JCPenney saw "unexpected light sales" in mid-April. In response, the company has slashed payroll, froze overtime and took other "drastic" cost-cutting measures.

"We have an expense challenge for the month of April and are asking all stores to do their fair share by closely monitoring all expenses," the New York Post quoted the memo as saying.

Separately, a source told the publication that a reduction in work hours at store levels generated a savings of approximately $8,000 per store. Employees who typically work 25 hours a week saw their hours slashed to 10 or 15 hours.


Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/news/earnings/16/05/7943108/jcpenney-tumbles-amid-report-company-is-taking-emergency-measures-to-sta

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JCPenney takes emergency measures to protect bottom line

http://nypost.com/2016/05/05/jcpenney-taking-emergency-measures-to-stay-afloat/

[Gomez163]

1. Where will I buy my fat guy shirts??

[hamsterjill]

2. The times they are a-changin'

I was in Macy's not long ago and got a very, very good deal on some pillows. The employee remarked that they are seeing slashings of prices with coupons galore because people have become more and more adverse to going to a mall setting, clothing even in the work place is now more casual, and a lot of people prefer ordering their merchandise online.

I fall into the last category because of time constraints.

[mac56]

3. Maybe all the Target boycotters can shop there instead.

Oh wait...

[Equinox Moon]

4. Fantastic! Break-up the big retailers!

It would be so amazing to go back to ma & pop shops. Local money staying in the local communities.

Break up all the monopolies.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. JCPenney is a monopoly?

Last edited Mon May 9, 2016, 09:52 AM - Edit history (2)

You shop there, or you do without?

I'm going to hazard a guess that they are facing problems precisely because there are so many other places to shop. I don't think that meets the definition of a monopoly.

I used to shop at Penney's back when it was within walking distance. The Wamsutta sheets were quite the bargain. All-cotton, and American-made. Now that Penney's is - well, I don't know where it is. Nowhere convenient, I guess.

(As long as I'm on a roll, I'm wearing a leather belt made in the USA and Justin boots made in the USA. The hat I wore to work was made in the USA. Yes, I look for that.)

I could be mistaken, but perhaps you have never lost a job. It's not the "fantastic" thing you think it is. JCPenney workers are not dancing in the streets anticipating this "fantastic" change that is coming their way.

By the way, where did you buy your computer?

[LisaM]

15. I have a cousin who works there

She's a hard worker, and she has a one-year old son. This would be devastating for her. I don't think of JC Penney as a monopoly anyway. The company that's closest to forming a monopoly is Amazon, which I actually boycott myself, though my boycott is obviously having zero effect on them.

[JI7]

21. Most employees like working there also

[avaistheone1]

8. Not so fast.

They are hardly a monopoly. JC Penney has been around 114 years. It's target customer is the working and middle class. Their selling proposition is to sell quality merchandise for fair prices.

JC Penney is not your average company. It was never a secret what James Cash Penney valued when he opened his first store called The Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," is a mission statement that guided Penney and his employees.

My sister has worked there for more than 25 years. Breaking up a company likes this makes no sense. It would put people like my family out of work, and it would remove a reliable company who sells good products and at fair prices from the community. I think your sentiments would be better focused on the big banks that bankrupt people and communities.

[scscholar]

27. "working and middle class"

This. I've taken at least three dozen male relatives or friends there to buy suits for unexpected funerals, and their tailors have always been spectacular. They also never failed to meet the tight deadlines. A well fitting midrange suit always looks better than a poorly fitted expensive suit. Most recently I went with my boss who had his wife unexpectedly die from the flu at only 42. He had enough to worry about without having to worry about looking bad. They really came through for him. I was sad when the local mall kicked them out for a Whole Foods store.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

32. The best made dress shirt I have came from Penney's.

The workmanship is topnotch. The label says "Stafford," but it exudes quality through and through.

[RKP5637]

29. I feel so old, as a tiny kid I remember the JC Penny store my mother shopped at that

had the overhead rail system for taking money from the checkout stations via a tin cup of sorts to the cash register department in the balcony. I was fascinated by it all as a tiny kid. There were all of these cable strings on the ceiling. It was like a miniature railway on the ceiling with these tin cups of sorts hanging from strings and many pulleys, etc. that went from the checkout stations to the baloney, and they were operated manually by pulling on the strings by the clerk.

[itsrobert]

24. They are being hammered by online retailers

The future is now. For better or worse.

[SunSeeker]

5. Looks like JCP is going the way of Sears. nt

[Sherman A1]

6. That is a pretty good hit

For the employees, losing almost half your hours and subsequent wages.

[avaistheone1]

9. My sister has worked their over 20 years.

She has a disabled husband at home. It will be quite a blow for their household.

[Ratty]

10. I read an interesting article on Cracked

It was about the realities of working at KMart in its last days. All of the cost cutting and job slashing only meant shabbier, dirtier stores with long stretches of empty, unstocked shelves that nobody wanted to shop at.

I don't believe for a second anyone's trying to "keep the company afloat." The execs want to squeeze as much money out of it as they can for themsleves before they bail.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. The Kmart near me is still open.

I cut through the parking lot two days ago. This one is in Annandale, Virginia.

I bought a Kindle Fire tablet from Kmart in February. I did my shopping online. Although the website said the tablets were in the store for the same price, the website was wrong. I went to the store to buy one, and they were not there. You could buy them only online. So I am a recent Kmart customer.

[Ratty]

13. Didn't know that

I haven't seen a KMart in ages. I was just going by the article I read which actually talked about both Blockbuster and KMart. Guess I over-assumed. Now Sears is actually gone, right? Or is it still hanging on?

Thousands of Blockbusters and Kmarts have gone out of business, but they didn't all shut down overnight. Instead, they often closed seemingly random departments to see if that saved them any money, like performing an amputation after the disease had already spread.

5 Apocalyptic Realities Working At A Modern Day Blockbuster

[mahatmakanejeeves]

14. I know I could check, but

I'm pretty sure there was a thread in LBN not too long ago regarding the closing of lots of Kmarts. Sears too. Also Radio Shack. So, where you are, maybe all the Kmarts or Sears or Radio Shacks got closed down, or maybe a few did, or maybe none at all got closed. It's a ZIP code by ZIP code action.

Maybe for you, you'd have to go fifty miles to find a Kmart. For me, it's only ten miles. I still have a Sears near me too.

Circuit City, by way of contrast, is completely gone. All of them got closed. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened to Blockbusters. Not too many people are renting videotapes these days. Now DVDs litter yard sales.

Gee, we've lost a lot of retail outlets over the years.

[houston16revival]

11. I spent $20 there in 2012

the other day they sent me a double offer, $10 off

$10 for Mother's Day

and $10 off $100 for Mother's Day

So when they're scraping the bottom of their customer barrel

You know something's up

Desperate

[JI7]

20. The coupons were actually good for the company.Johnson got rid of them

But coupons were always good with long time customers. Many complained when they got rid of them.

[TexasBushwhacker]

16. Ron Johnson killed it

He was the former VP at Apple that they made CEO in 2011. He was a DISASTER. He was the Carly Fiorina of retail.

[kentauros]

17. That's it, right there.

And they're still trying to recover from his antics. Sorry, "business decisions."

[maryellen99]

18. And the idiots on FB will blame Obama for it

Because you know according to them once Trump gets in Borders,Circuit City,and Blockbuster are all going to come back.

[TexasBushwhacker]

22. And the idea to hire him was from a hedge fund mgr

on their board. Another investor is Goldman Sachs and you better believe they've made money on the deal.

[JI7]

19. i agree. he made the stores feel cheaper .

[cannabis_flower]

23. I like JC Penney

I don't shop there often though because I usually buy used clothes, but when I need to buy something specific Penney's is great. I have a hard time getting good fitting pants because I am short and chubby and they have size 14 Petite Short. I bought my daughter a pair of nice dress pumps because she was looking for a job and she wore size 5 shoes and the only other place that had them costed $135 and these were $25.

[DAngelo136]

25. I walked by this place

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=803 I heard the funniest sound. Like somebody spinning?

So how's that "supply side" thing working out for all you shareholders?

Isn't it funny that the values that he lived by aren't the same ones that the management of the company now hold?

[RandySF]

26. That's a shame

JC Penny was the place to go for back-to-school clothes when I was a kid.

[U4ikLefty]

28. I like JCPenny.

Unlike Sears, they at least seem to notice the customer exists.

I go there regularly for casual clothes for work.

[CanadaexPat]

30. This sounds like hype by a short.

Every company I've ever worked for shuts down on expenses from time to time to meet their numbers - you can't order supplies, contractors are let go, hours cut, etc. that sounds like what's happening with JCP but someone is trying to make a buck off it in the stock market by hyping it.

[TheFarseer]

31. I like JC Pennys

I get the majority of my clothes there and I'm not sure where I'll go if it closes. Last week I saw a talking head saying JCP was going to double this year. Dumbass

[Joe Bacon]

34. So sad.

Penneys was the store I would go to buy my clothes until they closed half a dozen stores in the area where I live. Now I have to buy clothes onlne.