Mounting a turnaround of JCPenney, which has eluded a string of CEOs and the hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman, will test Simon's ability to juggle conflicting roles and his strategy to reinvigorate a mall business threatened by bad news from changing consumer habits, to the rise of e-commerce, and, in recent months, a global pandemic.īusiness Insider spoke with more than a dozen people who know and have worked with Simon to learn more about the press-shy mall king and his career make-or-break moment. “There is nothing in the economy that seems to be depressing their growth.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. “Other than that, the trend is still upward,” he continued. Still, he stressed, “a lot of those properties are relatively low lease arrangements… so the revenue is not exactly connected to the occupancy like it was, say, 10 years ago.”

Today, “Simon, along with Brookfield, is doing an excellent job of getting their properties back up to occupancy rates,” Marcotte said. “So that’s really what’s been driving their growth.” “Their better performing properties are offshore,” he said. He added that Simon’s international presence has played a key part in that. When it comes to Simon’s earnings, “there’s been clearly a bounce-back from the pandemic for their mall properties,” Marcotte said. In April, the New York Post reported that Simon and Brookfield were prepared to buy Kohl’s for $8.6 billion. In October, Simon announced it would hold a 50% stake in Jamestown, a real estate and investment management company whose properties include Ponce City Market in Atlanta and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. “But even with that said, we have an unbelievable return on investment after tax from the earnings that those businesses throw off, and we’re also making investments… in those businesses.” “The lower income consumer is tightening their belt, and we do have a few brands that are affected by that,” Simon said on the earnings call. SPARC Group’s portfolio also includes Aeropostale, Brooks Brothers, Forever 21, Lucky Brand and Nautica. So, too, did Simon’s investment in Reebok, which it oversees as part of SPARC Group, a partnership it formed with Authentic Brand Groups in 2017. However, the JCPenney Beauty expansion took a hit on Simon’s results this quarter, Simon acknowledged in the earnings call. Since launching as a pilot in 2021, JCPenney Beauty has onboarded nearly 100 new brands, more than 60 of which are BIPOC- and/or female-founded, according to a press release. In September, it said it would expand its JCPenney Beauty concept across the United States from 10 brick-and-mortar locations to 300 stores by early 2023 and 600 stores by spring 2023. JCPenney has announced some changes this fall. But at the same time, there’s not a very compelling brand story to JCPenney.” They are part of the overall growth of physical business.

“ They’re not doing badly compared to the way they were doing before. Right now, JCPenney’s strategy is to “get more earnings out of their existing stores and their website,” Dave Marcotte, SVP of Global Retail and Technology at Kantar, told Modern Retail. JCPenney estimates its revenue for the 2022 fiscal year will total $9 billion, up 10% from 2021 but down 16% from 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. It now has 650 stores across the majority of U.S. JCPenney closed 175 locations in 20 because of the pandemic. At the time it filed for bankruptcy, the company had $5 billion in debt. JCPenney was one of the earliest companies to offer items online in the 1990s but struggled to keep up with the quickly-changing retail landscape. Simon and Brookfield Property Partners made headlines in 2020 when they acquired JCPenney for $800 million. It currently operates 400 retail centers in 24 countries including Japan and France and holds a 22.4% interest in the European mall operator Klépierre. Simon has a robust portfolio of shopping, dining and entertainment properties that spans everything from regional malls and hotels to Premium Outlets and The Mills. “And so even though we may slow down next year or even into the holiday season, I don’t think the growth from our existing business is going to slow down, because the demand for new deals and space is there.” That’s where the return on investment is,” David Simon, CEO, chairman and president of the company, said in the earnings call this week. Simon is the 1 Source for Reaching Customers Across the Top Markets in the U.S. “We feel really good because physical retail is where the action is.

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