J C Penney Company Inc Beats Q3 Top Line; Comp Sales Flat

J C Penney Co

beat third-quarter top-line expectations although sales were slightly below the Wall Street consensus. After trending up earlier Wednesday, the Plano, Texas retailer fell nearly 4 percent in the extended session, trading recently at $7.46 a share. The company posted flat same-store sales in the recent period, citing a slowdown in September and October as warm weather hurt the sale of fall goods. The company forecast fourth-quarter same-store sales growth of 2 percent to 4 percent with continued gains in gross margin versus year-earlier results. For the recent period, gross margin was 36.6 percent of sales, compared with 29.5 percent a year earlier. "Significant improvement" in product mix and margin on clearance sales helped the recent margin gain. Inventory in the recent period was $3.358 billion, down 10.4 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The company posted a third-quarter loss of $188 million or $0.62 cents a share from $489, or $1.94 a share in the year-earlier period. Sales were essentially flat at $2.764 billion compared with $2.779 billion last year. a third-quarter loss of $0.80 per share, on sales of $2.8 billion. Wall Street expected a third-quarter loss of $0.80 per share, on sales of $2.8 billion.