Stocks to Watch: J.C. Penney, AIG (Update 1)

NEW YORK -- J.C. Penney , the department store giant, posted a fourth-quarter loss of $87 million, or 41 cents a share, a swing from year-earlier earnings of $271 million, or $1.13 a share.

Excluding items, earnings in the latest were 74 cents a share. Revenue was $5.43 billion.

Analysts, on average, were looking for earnings of 68 cents a share on revenue of $5.5 billion.

Same-store sales in the quarter fell 1.8%.

The retailer has jumped by $1.4 billion in value after new CEO Ron Johnson outlined a turnaround plan that kicked off on Feb. 1.

Shares were up 0.8% to $42.25 in premarket trading on Friday.

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AIG , the insurance giant, reported fourth-quarter net income of $19.8 billion, boosted by a gain of $17.7 billion related to the release of a deferred tax asset valuation allowance.

Operating profit in the quarter was 82 cents a share; analysts were looking for 63 cents.

Shares were surging 6.7% to $29.86.

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Salesforce.com , the cloud computing company, topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter earnings expectations.

For the three months ended Jan. 31, the company reported adjusted earnings of $61.6 million, or 43 cents a share, on revenue of $632 million. Analysts were expecting profit of 40 cents a share on revenue of $624 million.

Salesforce.com forecast non-GAAP earnings for the current fiscal year of $1.58 to $1.62 a share on revenue of $2.92 billion to $2.95 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters see profit of $1.62 a share on revenue of $2.91 billion.

The stock was popping by 10.2% to $13.33.

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Bank of America said it would stop selling new home loans to Fannie Mae. The announcement Thursday highlights a long legal battle over how many defaulted mortgages Bank of America should buy back from Fannie in the aftermath of the burst of the housing bubble.

Bank of America has said it will turn to Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae to back up its mortgages and that the recent decision would not affect its customers. The move, however, is huge given that Bank of America sold almost $38 billion in mortgages to Fannie last year.

Shares of Bank of America were rising 0.9% to $8.09.

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Private-equity firm Apollo Global is said to be near a deal to buy El Paso's oil-exploration business for about $7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The agreement, which includes Riverstone Holdings, an energy-focused private-equity group, may be signed by Friday. The oil and gas industry has been a handful of deals in the past year.

El Paso shares were 0.6% lower to $26.77 in premarket trading.

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Newmont Mining is seen posting profit of $1.27 a share on revenue of $2.74 billion.

Shares were slipping 0.2% to $63.68.

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Publisher Washington Post will report fourth-quarter earnings of $6.32 a share on revenue of $1.04 billion, according to analysts.

-- Written by Chao Deng and Joseph Woelfel

>To contact the writer of this article, click here: Joseph Woelfel

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