JCPenney has settled on the right number of stores for its brick-and-mortar fleet.
The department store company, which exited bankruptcy in December after filing a Chapter 11 petition in May with 846 locations, said it will now operate 672 stores. Though word surfaced on Wednesday that the retailer is slated to shutter more doors, a spokeswoman clarified that the planned closures are not new.
“There are no new store closures announced today,” the spokeswoman said, noting that 18 stores are on track to close in May under the “phased store optimization strategy that was announced last year.”
When Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management acquired JCPenney’s operations out of bankruptcy, it wasn’t clear how many stores they planned to carve out of the retailer’s base. JCP ultimately closed 154 stores after warning that closures could number as high as 200. A network of 672 stores means the retailer will close far fewer than the original plan a year ago.
On May 18, three days after its Chapter 11 filing, a business plan filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicated that JCP—when it was still operating as J.C. Penney Co. Inc.—had planned to cut 242 doors as part of its go-forward plan. If that have gone through, JCP would have operated as a greatly slimmed-down version with 604 stores.