What Will J.C. Penney Stock Do After Recent News?

With shares of J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP) trading around $13, is JCP an OUTPERFORM, WAIT AND SEE or STAY AWAY? Let's analyze the stock with the relevant sections of our CHEAT SHEET investing framework:

T = Trends for a Stock’s Movement

J.C. Penney is a retailer operating over a thousand department stores in just about every state in the United States and Puerto Rico. Its business consists of selling merchandise and services to consumers through its department stores and website. It sells family apparel and footwear, accessories, fine and fashion jewelry, beauty products through Sephora, and home furnishings. The company has not done too well in recent years but it is doing what it can to be a top provider of apparel and related products. The products J.C. Penney is able to produce and market can take the company to rising profits, but it would need to see a change of approach soon.

J.C. Penney former shareholder Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management has sold all of its shares in the struggling retailer to Citigroup (NYSE:C). Citigroup is offering the stake to other investors at $12.90 a share. Ackman has spent three years trying to revitalize the company, but his efforts mostly failed and his J.C. Penney stock was weighing down the performance of the hedge fund. Ackman stepped down from the company's board two weeks ago.

T = Technicals on the Stock Chart are Weak

J.C. Penney stock has witnessed a disastrous decline over the last several quarters. The stock is now bouncing off of multi-year lows. Analyzing the price trend and its strength can be done using key simple moving averages. What are the key moving averages? The 50-day (pink), 100-day (blue), and 200-day (yellow) simple moving averages. As seen in the daily price chart below, J.C. Penney is trading below its key averages which signal neutral to bearish price action in the near-term.

(Source: Thinkorswim)

Taking a look at the implied volatility (red) and implied volatility skew levels of J.C. Penney options may help determine if investors are bullish, neutral, or bearish.

	Implied Volatility (IV)	30-Day IV Percentile	90-Day IV Percentile
J.C. Penney Options	67.51%	33%	30%

What does this mean? This means that investors or traders are buying a minimal amount of call and put options contracts, as compared to the last 30 and 90 trading days.

	Put IV Skew	Call IV Skew
September Options	Steep	Average
October Options	Steep	Average

As of today, there is an average demand from call buyers or sellers and high demand by put buyers or low demand by put sellers, all neutral to bearish over the next two months. To summarize, investors are buying a minimal amount of call and put option contracts and are leaning neutral to bearish over the next two months.

On the next page, let’s take a look at the earnings and revenue growth rates and the conclusion.

E = Earnings Are Decreasing Quarter-Over-Quarter

Rising stock prices are often strongly correlated with rising earnings and revenue growth rates. Also, the last four quarterly earnings announcement reactions help gauge investor sentiment on J.C. Penney’s stock. What do the last four quarterly earnings and revenue growth (Y-O-Y) figures for J.C. Penney look like and more importantly, how did the markets like these numbers?

	2013 Q2	2013 Q1	2012 Q4	2012 Q3
Earnings Growth (Y-O-Y)	-297.01%	-110.67%	-518.09%	16.42%
Revenue Growth (Y-O-Y)	-11.88%	-16.40%	-28.41%	-26.57%
Earnings Reaction	5.97%	-4.15%	7.37%	-16.96%

J.C. Penney has seen decreasing earnings and revenue figures over the last four quarters. From these numbers, the markets have had mixed feelings about J.C. Penney’s recent earnings announcements.

P = Weak Relative Performance Versus Peers and Sector

How has J.C. Penney stock done relative to its peers Macy’s (NYSE:M), Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD), Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS), and sector?

	J.C. Penney	Macy’s	Sears	Kohl’s	Sector
Year-to-Date Return	-30.10%	12.38%	-0.27%	16.57%	9.15%

J.C. Penney has been a poor relative performer, year-to-date.

Conclusion

J.C. Penney aims to provide the latest apparel and household products to consumers and companies across most of the United States and Puerto Rico. In recent news, Bill Ackman has sold all of its shares of the company to Citigroup after leaving the board. The stock has been declining over the last few years but is now seeing a bounce from lows. Over the last four quarters, earnings and revenues have been decreasing which has produced mixed feelings among investors in the company. Relative to its peers and sector, J.C. Penney has been a weak year-to-date performer. WAIT AND SEE what J.C. Penney does this coming quarter.