JC Penney (JCP, $1.05) Falls Almost Below $1 - Weak Margins Continue to Challenge Retailer

JC Penney’s stock price dropped almost below $1 on Wednesday – for the first time since 1929 when it began trading on a stock exchange.

The department store chain has been incurring losses since 2010, and is currently knee-deep in $4 billion debt with a junk credit rating. Traffic at its physical stores is thinning out while inventory is piling up, thereby leading the company to offer massive discounts in its struggle to boost sales. JC Penney had a $151 million loss in its third quarter.

The company is considering additional store closures. Its attempted turnaround strategies, such as selling appliances a few years ago, seems to have been unable to create the effect the firm is desperately in need of.

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Sergey Savastiouk|Expert

Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D. has a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow University and has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, investor, manager, and mathematician. His professional expertise is in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, system and pattern analysis, and software and hardware system integration. He has served as the CEO of several hi-tech start-up companies and nonprofit organizations, which has given him proven capabilities in business strategy for high-tech start-up companies, market assessment, company formation, team building, product development, marketing, and sales. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines on related fields. As a retail investor, he spent 15 years developing his proprietary trading and quantitative algorithms (now Tickeron’s A.I.), which brought him significant returns in trading the stock market. His current work and goal in founding Tickeron is to bring professional, sophisticated stock market analysis capabilities to retail investors via an easy-to-use interface.