J C Penney Corp Inc. is my selected firm for this modules review. J C Penney is a retail company founded by James Cash Penney is 1902, incorporated in Delaware in 1924. The company's business consists of providing merchandise and services to customers through department stores, catalog departments, and the Internet. J C Penney offers customers serve customers in department stores as well as virtually and offer the same products including family apparel, home furnishings, jewelry, shoes, accessories as well as provided certain services such as hair and beauty salons and photography in some locations. In upstate New York, J C Penney was always to go-to for school clothes, weddings, vacations among many other formal and causal occasions.

CNN reported that J C Penney filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy on May 15, 2001. CEO Jill Soltau reported that "J C Penney filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in order to implement a financial restructuring plan through a court-supervised process will be the best plan to ensure that J C Penney will build on its over 100-year history to serve customers in decades to come" (CNN, 2020). Evidence shows from 10-K and 10-Q reports that J C Penney had a decade of bad decisions, executive instability, and damaging market trends. The coronavirus pandemic caused the company to fall victim to drastic financial decreases because consumers were not shopping at malls and visiting department stores which was a financial blow that J C Penney could not afford. J C Penney chose to file Chapter 11 Bankruptcy because this only means the company was struggling but doesn't mean that they will cease operating (Fortune, 2020).

Based on the information reviewed from the EDGARD Database archives, in 202 J C Penney's actual assets were $7,989,000,000 and actual liabilities were $7,160,000,000 leaving an economic profit/ revenue of $829,000,000. After deducting implicit and explicit costs, and costs of labor we see a downward trend for supply and demand. "The Company's annual earnings depend to a significant extent on the results of operations from the last quarter of its fiscal year" (EDGAR, 2020). For J C Penney, sales for that period of time average approximately 30% of annual sales and the cost per share stands at $28.50 per share (EDGAR, 2020).

"At January 27, 2001, J C Penney operated 3,800 retail stores, comprised of 1,111 J C Penney department stores, 49 Renner department stores, and 2,640 Eckerd drugstores, in all 50 States, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Mexico, of which 210 J C Penney stores were owned, one Renner store was owned, and 49 Eckerd drugstores were owned. Eight distribution centers, four of which were owned. Eckerd owned and operated 8 drugstore distribution centers. The company also owned their Home Office Facility. By owning all of these locations, J C Penney had implicit costs.

In conclusion, while focusing on Producer Behavior closely, it is clear that "each business requires economic resources to produce its products. In obtaining and using resources, a firm makes monetary payments to resource owners (example: workers/ labor) and incurs opportunity costs when using resources it already owns (example: production facilities; entrepreneurial talent)" (Brue, S.L., Flynn, S.M., & McConnell, C.R. 2021).

References:

Brue, S.L., Flynn, S.M., & McConnell, C.R. (2021). Economics, principles, problems, and policies. (22nded.) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education. Chap. 9.

https://lopucki.law.ucla.edu/companyinfo.php?name=J.+C.+Penney+Company%2C+Inc(Links to an external site.)

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https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000077182/000093066101500250/d10k405.txt(Links to an external site.)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000077182/000093066101502568/d10q.txt(Links to an external site.)

https://fortune.com/2020/06/29/companies-filing-bankruptcy-2020-during-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-19-economy-industries/(Links to an external site.)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/business/jcpenney-bankruptcy/index.html(Links to an external site.)

Is the post-mortem analysis submitted surprising? Why?

What limitations do you see in the set of tools used in this analysis?

(Please incorporate references)