The Kroger Co.

The Kroger Co. is an American food and drug retailer that operates 2,697 supermarkets across 35 states and the District of Columbia, generating $147.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. With more than 403,000 associates, approximately 63 million households served annually, and a growing eCommerce and retail media business, Kroger is the second-largest food retailer in the United States by revenue after Walmart.

This is a story about a 143-year-old grocery giant at an inflection point. Kroger has spent the last two years absorbing three simultaneous shocks: the collapse of its $24.6 billion merger with Albertsons, the sudden resignation of its CEO, and a $2.5 billion write-down on automated fulfillment centers that represented a costly strategic retreat from a fully automated eCommerce model. The board's response — hiring Greg Foran, the former Walmart U.S. CEO, as the first external chief executive in company history — signals that incrementalism is off the table. The file turns on whether Foran can close the gap between Kroger's considerable assets and its underwhelming recent performance without starting a price war that the P&L cannot sustain.

The bull case is straightforward: Kroger has scale, data, a captive private-label manufacturing base, and a retail media business that is genuinely differentiated. If Foran's cost-cutting program funds surgical price investments that win back traffic, the company's fixed-cost base and shrinking share count could produce meaningful earnings growth. The bear case is that grocery is a structurally disadvantaged category — perpetually low margins, relentless competition from Walmart and Costco, and a unionized workforce that limits operational flexibility — and that no CEO, however talented, can change the physics of a 2% margin business.