February 5, 2004, 12:00 AM

Internet sales at J.C. Penney rise 50%, as total sales increase 2%

Internet sales at J.C. Penney rose about 50% year-to-year for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, to more than $600 million, the company said today. By comparison, total sales rose 2% to $32.9 billion. Web sales as a percentage of total rose to 18% from 12%.

Paul Demery

Managing Editor

Internet sales at J.C. Penney Co. Inc.`s JCPenney.com rose about 50% year-over-year for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, to more than $600 million from about $400 million, the company said today. By comparison, total sales rose 2% to $32.9 billion. All sales received a boost from a 53rd week factored into the 2004 fiscal year.

Internet sales at JCPenney.com for the 2004 fiscal year were 18% of total sales, up from 12% in the prior year. Comparable store sales for J.C. Penney department stores rose 0.9% year-to-year, while Eckerd comp store sales declined 1.2%. The company`s Eckerd unit also operates online drugstore Eckerd.com, but its web sales were not broken out separately. Total corporate-wide sales include store, catalog and web sales for J.C. Penney and store and web sales for Eckerd.

For the 14 weeks ended Jan. 31, total catalog and Internet sales rose 14.6% to $885 million from $772 million in the year-earlier period, compared to a 6.7% increase in total sales to $10.2 billion from $9.5 billion.

For the five weeks ended Jan. 31, catalog/Internet sales rose 40% year-over-year to $214 million from $153 million, compared to a 26% increase in total sales to $2.6 billion from $2.1 billion.

The company didn’t break out Internet sales separately for the 14- and 5-week periods. It noted that the 2004 fiscal year was based on 53 weeks; the 53rd week added $158 million to J.C. Penney store sales, $266 million to Eckerd store sales and $46 million to catalog/Internet sales.

Comp store figures were given for comparable 52-week periods, the company said.

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