• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, May 8, 2013

While J. C. Penney Company isn’t scheduled to release its fiscal first-quarter earnings until May 16, the news is looking sufficiently bad that it’s issued a heads-up to investors. The Plano, Tex.-based retailer says that a preliminary accounting shows that first quarter sales sank 16.4% to $2.635 billion, based on a 16.6% tumble in comparable-store sales. In its fiscal fourth quarter report, released in late February, comparable-store sales fell 32%. By early April, it had fired CEO Ron Johnson.