JC Penny's fiscal Q1 EBITDA rises 63% to $176 m

Net loss for the quarter showed an improvement of 55 per cent to $68 million as compared to $150 million loss in Q1 last fiscal, ended May 2, 2015.

Operating loss for the current quarter fell to $22 million as compared to $46 million loss in the same period last fiscal, showing an improvement of over 100 per cent.

The results showed remarkable improvement despite a fall of 1.6 per cent in JC Penny’s net sales for the quarter. Net sales fell to $2,811 million as compared to $2,857 million last fiscal.

“The first quarter was clearly challenging from a sales perspective,” Marvin Ellison, CEO of JC Penny said. “The teams did an excellent job of proactively managing the business throughout the quarter to ensure we remained a fiscally disciplined organisation. As a result, we exceeded our profitability expectations, achieving a 63 per cent increase in EBITDA to $176 million for the quarter.”

“While our first quarter sales were below our expectations, we are maintaining our annual comp guidance of 3 per cent to 4 per cent growth as a result of positive nature of our recent sales trends, the strength of our Sephora business and our decision to accelerate our appliance rollout,” he informed.

“Accordingly, we are reaffirming our $1 billion in EBITDA for 2016,” Ellison added. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India