The Kroger Co.

The Kroger Co. is an American supermarket retailer that operated 2,697 stores across 35 states and the District of Columbia at the end of fiscal 2025, selling groceries, fuel and pharmacy prescriptions through a single domestic retail segment and generating $147.6 billion of sales. Almost everything the company is worth to an investor turns on a loop it calls the flywheel: the traffic and loyalty-card data thrown off by the stores are monetised through higher-margin businesses—chiefly retail media—and the profit from those businesses is reinvested as lower shelf prices, which are meant to earn more trips, more data and more media. It is a coherent model. It is also, right now, a model under strain.

Kroger has spent three years being defined by events rather than operations. Its proposed merger with Albertsons was terminated after a December 2024 antitrust injunction, leaving litigation and settlement charges behind it; its automated fulfillment network, built around Ocado technology, missed its operational and financial targets and was written down by $2.5 billion; and the corner office turned over, first to Chairman Ron Sargent as interim chief executive and then, in February 2026, to Greg Foran, the former head of Walmart U.S. The reported numbers carry the scars: fiscal 2025 operating profit of $1.9 billion was less than half the prior year's $3.8 billion, and GAAP diluted earnings per share fell to $1.54 from $3.67—even as adjusted diluted EPS, which strips out the impairment and other items, rose 9% to $4.85 and operating cash flow reached $7.3 billion.

At $60.00 a share on 18 September 2026, Kroger carries a market capitalisation of roughly $35.4 billion and an enterprise value of about $50.8 billion, equal to 9.6 times the $5,312 million of trailing GAAP EBITDA the last four quarters produced. That is neither a distressed multiple nor a growth multiple, and the 52-week range of $54.15 to $76.58 on an intraday basis shows how unresolved the market's view is. The file turns on a single question: whether a self-funded price reset can bend Kroger's unit volumes and share upward before the grocery market's structural drift toward Walmart, the clubs and Aldi turns the middle of the market into a permanent squeeze.