Retail Earnings Parade Begins: JC Penney, Kohl's In The Spotlight

• The big retailers begin taking their turns on the earnings stage this week.
• Highlights include the most recent quarterly results from two leading department store operators.
• Wall Street analysts are looking for an earnings decline from one and a net loss from the other.

As earnings season begins to wind down, it's time for the parade of quarterly reports from big retailers to begin. And kicking things off this week are department store operators J C Penney Company Inc JCP, Kohl's Corporation KSS, Macy's, Inc. M and Nordstrom, Inc. JWN.

Here we focus on the former two retailers, and Wall Street analysts are looking for a smaller net loss from JC Penney and shrinking earnings from Kohl's. However, at least a little revenue growth is expected from each of them.

Below is a quick look at what analysts expect from these two reports, followed by a glance at some of the other most anticipated earnings results scheduled for this week.

JC Penney

Wall Street's consensus forecast for the struggling retailer calls for the fiscal first-quarter net loss to have narrowed from $(0.57) per share a year ago to $(0.36). The Estimize forecast concurs. But note JC Penney handily bested earnings expectations of both Wall Street and Estimize in the past four quarters.

The forecast from a consensus of 28 Estimize respondents has revenue in the first quarter totaling $2.94 billion, again about the same as Wall Street expectations. That would be up less than 3 percent from in the same period of last year. JC Penney is scheduled to report before Friday's opening bell.

Kohl's

When the second-largest U.S. department store by retail sales shares its fiscal first-quarter results early Thursday, the Wall Street forecast is that it will post earnings per share (EPS) of $0.39, along with revenue of $4.14 billion. That would compare to the $0.63 per share and $4.12 billion posted in the same period of last year.

The six Estimize survey respondents are slightly more pessimistic, calling for earnings of $0.36 per share on $4.13 billion in revenue. Either EPS estimate would be the lowest level in any quarter in the past two years, and revenue hasn't been lower since the first quarter of last year.

And Others

As mentioned, retailers Macy's and Nordstrom are also to tap to share their latest results this week. Wall Street analysts are looking for a shrinking bottom line from both of them. But Macy's topped the consensus earnings forecast in the past two quarters, while Nordstrom fell short of expectations.

Other companies that Wall Street analysts expect to show at least some earnings growth when they report this week include Dean Foods, Electronic Arts, NVIDIA, Tyson Foods and Walt Disney. The consensus forecast calls for EPS at Hertz Global to be the same as in the year-ago period.

On the other hand, EPS at Allergan, Nokia, Petrobras and Teva Pharmaceutical will be smaller than a year ago, according to the consensus forecasts. And net losses are in the cards for JD.com, Opko Health and SolarCity if expectations are accurate.

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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