J.C Penney failed to buck the trend of the sales falling in department store chains in this holiday season. However, in spite of the sales seeing a major decline, it has reaffirmed that they will be maintaining their financial outlook for this year too.

The company has said that the same store sales for a period of more thanJ.C. Penney sees drop in the sales during holiday season nine weeks ending 4th January has seen a drop of 7.5%.

The shares of Penney have been down by over 3% on Thursday in the premarket trade after the news.

It has been said by the retailer that their adjusted sales for the same store which do not include the impact of their exit from the furniture and major appliances category had been down by 5.3%.

Penney has been calling still for the same-store sales which is a major metric which monitors the sales of the stores of retailers which are open for a minimum of one year for dropping by 7 or 8 % in the year 2019.

The Analysts are expecting the same store sales also for the fall by 7.4% in the fourth quarter that also includes holiday season sales.

The announcement has followed by one of the rivals on the previous day in which Macy’s had said that the sales for the same-store had dropped by 0.6%. The decline has not been as bad as the fears had been. The CEO had said that Macy’s was seeing an increasingly strong trend for the improvement post third quarter onwards.

Kohl’s has said on Thursday that the sales were down by 0.2% and the drop made Kohl’s lower their bar for the outlook for full year.