Though J.C. Penney corporate headquarters announced Friday that between 130-140 department stores were closing in the next few months, the local retailer at the Bonita Lakes Mall in Meridian is saved from the chopping block.

“We’re not going anywhere,” local J.C. Penny Merchandise Manager Tina Jones said. “We weren’t nervous about being one of the stores that might be closing because we’re the best store in the area.”

Jones said the local J.C. Penney has between 85-90 employees.

The department store giant’s latest quarterly results, also released Friday, illustrate its struggle to connect with shoppers: Sales were down 0.7 percent at stores open more than a year. And yet the report also demonstrated that J.C. Penney, unlike department store rivals such as Macy’s and Sears, has had improving momentum lately. The company managed to deliver a net profit in 2016, the first time it has done so since 2010.

J.C. Penney’s decision to close stores comes as many industry executives and analysts say that old-school chains are “overstored,” meaning they have too many locations for the era of online shopping. Macy’s is in the process of closing 100 stores and eliminating some 10,000 jobs. Sears said in January it would close 150 stores, some from its namesake chain, and some from the Kmart chain.

Marvin Ellison, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement that J.C. Penney is slashing stores because “we believe we must take aggressive action to better align our retail operations for sustainable growth.”

The company is set to disclose in mid-March which locations it is to shut down. J.C. Penney said the affected stores account for less than 5 percent of total sales. It expects the closures will result in $200 million of annual cost savings.