Boston, MA 10/09/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Freshly energized by sale of close to 800 million dollars worth of shares, J.C. Penny (NYSE:JCP) has come out with updates on its various business fronts. But with second update from company’s side in less than 10 days, there is a section of market participants who feel that there may be some reason that company is continuously trying to paint a rosy picture about its financial state and business.
J.C. Penny is the same company which in an effort to go up-market, ticked off its most loyal and die hard customers. And because of this, the sales in previous year were 25 percent less than what they were in a year before.
Company’s Chief Executive Officer in a statement, agrees indirectly to the fact that company had messed up its retail strategy sometime back. This flawed strategy resulted in a substantial loss of revenue and more importantly customers for the company. The CEO mentioned that main aim now for each and every employee was to reconnect with original customers and to bring them back to JCP stores. And in a move towards that direction, the company has been closing some of the ‘home-boutiques’. Company would then reallocate the freed up space to products like towels, utensils and more profitable ones like luggage and window treatments. And it seems that such ploys might be working, even though at a slow pace. In an update to the investors, company confirmed that though sales for month of September were down when compared with September last year, it had increased 5.80% over the previous month of August 2013.
It seems that company is going to end the year with $2 billion worth of liquidity. Out of this, almost 800 million would have come from sale of shares in open markets last week. Analysts are avoiding taking any call for the time being and are waiting for customer response toward JCP’s strategy in holiday season before taking a call.
Another small cap company that grabbed our attention is AmpliTech (OTCMKTS:AMPG). The company today announced an Increase of 80% in booked purchase orders over last year.
AMPG specializes in providing RF/microwave, microelectronic, MMIC, and low noise amplifiers for critical and high-reliability, wireless and commercial applications. The company has been in the limelight for quite some time now with increased demand for it’s custom designed amplifiers. According to the press release, it’s backlog has reached record levels for the company’s history. The Company recently announced that it had received over $500,000 of orders during the second quarter from 3 large defense and commercial contractors for its state-of-the-art amplifier solutions when attending the International Microwave Symposium in Seattle WA. earlier this year.
Fawad Maqbool, Amplitech CEO stated,” we are very excited about the interest our unique and custom products continue to receive.” He further stated, “our unique products are now designed into long-life programs such as F16 fighters, and UAV Drones. We are proud to be a contributor to these high-profile programs”.
