The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) is an American retail supermarket chain founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It reported US$ 76.7 billion in sales during fiscal year 2009. It is the country's largest grocery store chain[3] and its second-largest grocery retailer by volume[4] and second-place general retailer in the country, with Wal-Mart being the largest.[5] As of 2010, Kroger operated, either directly or through its subsidiaries 3,619 stores.[6]
Kroger's headquarters are centralized in downtown Cincinnati,[7] but it spans many states with store formats that include supermarkets, hypermarkets, department stores, convenience stores and mall jewelry stores. Kroger-branded grocery stores are located throughout the Midwestern and Southern United States.
The Kroger Co. (Kroger), incorporated in 1902, is a retailer in the United States. The Company also manufactures and processes some of the food for sale in its supermarkets. As of January 30, 2010, the Company operated, either directly or through its subsidiaries, 2,468 supermarkets and multi-department stores, 893 of which had fuel centers. The Company’s supermarket and multi-department stores operate under banners, including Kroger, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, King Soopers, Smith’s, Fry’s, Fry’s Marketplace, Dillons, QFC and City Market. Kroger operates 40 manufacturing plants, primarily bakeries and dairies. In addition to the supermarkets, it operated through subsidiaries, 777 convenience stores and 374 fine jewelry stores. Its fine jewelry stores located in malls are operated in leased locations. In addition, 87 convenience stores were operated through franchise agreements.
The Company’s supermarkets are operated under a combination food and drug stores (combo stores); multi-department stores; marketplace stores, or price impact warehouses. The combo stores are the primary food store format. The stores offer the specialty departments that customers desire for one-stop shopping, including natural food and organic sections, pharmacies, general merchandise, pet centers and perishables, such as fresh seafood and organic produce. Multi-department stores are larger in size than combo stores. In addition to the departments offered at a typical combo store, multi-department stores sell a selection of general merchandise items, such as apparel, home fashion and furnishings, electronics, automotive products, toys and fine jewelry.
Marketplace stores are smaller in size than multi-department stores. They offer full-service grocery and pharmacy departments, as well as an expanded general merchandise area that includes outdoor living products, electronics, home goods and toys. Price impact warehouse stores offer a no-frills, low cost warehouse format and feature everyday low prices plus promotions for a selection of grocery, and health and beauty care items. The items provided include meat, dairy, baked goods and fresh produce items. The average size of a price impact warehouse store is similar to that of a combo store.
The Company’s supermarkets, on average, stock approximately 11,000 private label items. The Company’s corporate brand products are produced and sold in three tiers. Approximately 39% of the corporate brand units sold is produced in the Company’s manufacturing plants. As of January 30, 2010, the Company operated 40 manufacturing plants. These plants consisted of 18 dairies, 10 deli or bakery plants, five grocery product plants, three beverage plants, two meat plants and two cheese plants.
During the recession of the early 1990s, Kroger felt the pressure of increasing competition in several of the markets it served. The geographic diversity of the firm's holdings, however, insulated it from serious trouble. Under the leadership of Joseph A. Pilcher, who became CEO in 1990, Kroger adopted a strategy of protecting market share at all costs, including sacrificing margins for the more important cash flow needed to pay off the debt. When faced with increased competition in a particular market--for example when Food Lion, Inc. expanded into Texas in 1991--Kroger would simply lower prices and accept the resulting reduced margins. In fact, Kroger lost money for a period in the early 1990s in Texas as well as in Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio. The company was able to offset such losses to some degree by relying more heavily on higher margin markets, although such markets were becoming rarer thanks to the expansion of low-price competitors.
Kroger also had to face the consequences of its unionized workforce and had to compete with nonunion chains. In addition to the increasing competitive pressures, Kroger's sales and earnings were affected in 1992 by a ten-week strike in Michigan and another work stoppage in Tennessee. Although the Michigan strike ended with the workers essentially accepting the package initially offered them, 1992 sales increased only 3.7 percent over 1991 and the company margin remained in the 0.5 percent range where it had resided since 1990. Consequently, Kroger embarked on a major program to improve its efficiency through technological improvements. From 1992 to 1994, $120 million was spent to make checkout operations more efficient and accurate, to install a new management information system, and to improve direct-store delivery accounting.
By 1994 Kroger's debt load had been reduced significantly, to $3.89 billion. Kroger enjoyed savings of almost $23 million in 1994 alone from its technology investments. The company also benefited from the economic recovery during which interest rates fell, thus reducing the amount needed to spend servicing its debt whenever it could refinance its loans. Enough money could now be freed up for Kroger to shift its focus from debt maintenance to expansion. The timing of this expansion was critical in that Kroger now faced yet another and significant threat, this time from supercenters--such as those operated by Wal-Mart, Kmart Corporation, and Meijer Incorporated--which were combination food, pharmacy, and general merchandise stores. By 1994 more than one-quarter of Kroger's sales base competed directly with a supercenter. Kroger's plan was to continue using its combination food and drug store format--facilities that were about one-third the size of the supercenters--but to increase their number dramatically.
During 1994, Kroger spent $534 million on the expansion, which included 45 new stores, 17 expanded stores, 66 remodelings, and the acquisition of 20 stores. From 1995 to 1997, $600 million was to be spent each year on expansion projects. Overall, this would be the largest capital expansion in Kroger history.
To free up additional money for the program and further reduce the company debt, Kroger in early 1995 sold Time Saver Stores, a division of Dillon which included 116 convenience stores in the New Orleans area, to E-Z Serve Convenience Stores, Inc. of Houston, Texas. Later that year, David B. Dillon, CEO of the Dillon subsidiary, became president and COO of Kroger.
Early returns from the company's mid-1990s expansion were positive. Kroger's 1994 margin of 1.2 percent was its best in several years, and 1995 saw a healthy sales increase of 4.3 percent. By 1997, when Kroger's grocery store count was nearing 1,400, the company enjoyed its best year yet--net income of $444 million on sales of $27 billion, translating into a 1.6 percent margin--while total debt had dropped to $3.2 billion.
Late 1990s and Beyond: Acquiring Fred Meyer, Squaring Off Against Wal-Mart
Its improving fortunes emboldened Kroger to join--in a big way--the ongoing consolidation wave that was sweeping the grocery industry. In October 1998 the company announced that it planned to acquire Fred Meyer, Inc. in a stock swap valued at about $8 billion plus assumed debt of $4.8 billion. The deal closed in May 1999. The Portland, Oregon-based Fred Meyer brought to Kroger 800 grocery stores located in 12 western states--a good geographic fit given Kroger's presence primarily in the Midwest, South, and Southwest. The Oregon firm operated several chains: the flagship Fred Meyer stores, one-stop shopping superstores averaging 145,000 square feet and including more than 225,000 food and nonfood products arranged within dozens of departments; and the Smith's Food & Drug Centers, Ralphs Grocery, and Quality Food Centers supermarket chains--the latter two having been acquired by Fred Meyer earlier in 1998. Fred Meyer, which reported 1997 sales of $15 billion, was also the fourth largest fine jewelry retailer in the country, operating 381 stores under five names in 26 states. The Fred Meyer deal enabled Kroger to maintain its position as the largest supermarket operator in the United States, with annual sales of about $43 billion, although the company soon ceded its position as the largest U.S. food retailer to the hyperbolically growing Wal-Mart.
Kroger wrung out significant synergies from its huge acquisition, achieving annual cost savings of $380 million per year. By 2000, revenues had swelled to $49 billion, while net income hit $877 million, signifying another jump in the profit margin, to 1.8 percent. Also during 2000, however, a deal to purchase the 75 grocery stores operated by Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. in Texas and Oklahoma was nixed by the FTC, which was concerned about the potential erosion in competition in the Fort Worth, Texas, market.
Combining to slow Kroger's growth to a crawl was the economic downturn of the early 2000s coupled with heady competition--particularly from Wal-Mart, which by undercutting prices charged at traditional grocery stores pressured the entire food retailing industry to keep prices down. Revenues only inched ahead, topping $50 billion for the first time in 2001, then reaching $51.76 billion the next year, an increase of just 5.6 percent over a two-year span. Profits, however, surged 37 percent, hitting $1.2 billion in 2002 (and representing a profit margin of 2.3 percent), as Kroger management reined in operating costs. Late in 2001, for example, the company launched a restructuring that involved the elimination of 1,500 jobs and the consolidation of its Nashville division into other divisional offices. During 2002 Kroger aimed to cut another $500 million in operating costs in part by shifting from a divisional buying structure to centralized, nationwide buying. At the same time, the company completed several small, fill-in acquisitions, adding 34 stores from Baker's, Furr's, and other grocers in 2001 and then buying 42 Raley's, Albertson's, and Winn-Dixie supermarkets the following year. By the end of 2002, Kroger was operating nearly 2,500 supermarkets and multi-department stores. About 350 of these outlets included gasoline stations, an initiative first launched in 1998 to generate additional revenue.
In June 2003 Pichler stepped down as CEO of Kroger and was succeeded by Dillon, who became chairman as well one year later when Pichler retired. The new leader's first year was a difficult one, punctuated particularly by labor disputes. Kroger's Ralphs chain, along with Albertson's, Inc. and Safeway Inc., endured a four-and-a-half-month strike in southern California--the longest grocery strike in U.S. history. That strike ended in late February 2004. Kroger was also hit by a two-month strike in West Virginia in late 2003 that temporarily closed 44 stores. The two disputes reduced the company's 2003 fourth-quarter profits by $156.4 million. Several other charges, including a $444.2 million pretax charge associated with goodwill impairment at the struggling Smith's chain, resulted in Kroger taking $801.3 million in after-tax charges for the year, reducing profits to just $314.6 million. Sales, however, increased 3.9 percent, to $53.79 billion.
Despite the disappointing results for 2003, Kroger seemed better positioned than the other major U.S. supermarket players to withstand the Wal-Mart onslaught. Its keen focus on curtailing operating costs was enabling it to hold the line on price increases, this in spite of the fact that its unionized workforce was better paid and enjoyed better benefits than the nonunion workers at Wal-Mart. Moreover, Kroger claimed to hold the number one or number two position in 43 of its 52 major markets. Future acquisitions and new store openings were likely to be designed to bolster the company's standing in these existing territories rather than to expand into new ones.
Principal Subsidiaries: Dillon Companies, Inc.; Fred Meyer, Inc.
Principal Divisions: Atlanta Division; Central Division; Cincinnati Division; Delta Division; Great Lakes Division; Mid-Atlantic Division; Mid-South Division; Southwest Division.
Principal Operating Units: City Market; Convenience Stores and Supermarket Petroleum; Dillon Stores; Food 4 Less; Fred Meyer Jewelers; Fred Meyer Stores; Fry's; Jay C; King Soopers; Kwik Shop; Loaf 'N Jug/MiniMart; QFC; Quik Stop; Ralphs; Smith's; Tom Thumb; Turkey Hill Minit Markets.
Principal Competitors: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; Albertson's, Inc.; Safeway Inc.; Royal Ahold N.V.
OVERALL
Beta: 0.38
Market Cap (Mil.): $15,075.23
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 620.64
Annual Dividend: 0.42
Yield (%): 1.73
FINANCIALS
KR Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 13.99 17.86 35.12
EPS (TTM): 1,667.94 -- --
ROI: 7.37 6.65 8.07
ROE: 21.86 8.80 13.03
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1902 as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company
Employees: 290,000
Sales: $53.79 billion (2003)
Stock Exchanges: New York Cincinnati Chicago
Ticker Symbol: KR
NAIC: 445110 Supermarkets and Other Grocery (Except Convenience) Stores; 445120 Convenience Stores; 447110 Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores; 448310 Jewelry Stores
Key Dates:
1883: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Bernard H. Kroger founds the Great Western Tea Company, one of the first chain store operations in the United States.
1902: With 40 stores and a factory in Cincinnati, the company incorporates as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company.
1929: Store count peaks at 5,575.
1946: Company changes its name to The Kroger Co.
1952: Revenues surpass $1 billion.
1960: Kroger expands into the drugstore business.
1983: Company acquires Dillon Companies, Inc. and begins operating stores coast to coast; the Kwik Shop convenience store chain is also acquired.
1988: Kroger fends off hostile takeovers by awarding shareholders with a special dividend, pushing its debt load to $5.3 billion.
1999: In a deal valued at about $13 billion, Kroger acquires Fred Meyer, Inc.
2000: Revenues top $50 billion.
Name Age Since Current Position
Dillon, David 59 2004 Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
McMullen, W. Rodney 50 2009 President, Chief Operating Officer, Director
Schlotman, J. Michael 53 2003 Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President
Heldman, Paul 59 2006 Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary
Hjelm, Christopher 49 2005 Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer
Barclay, Kathleen 55 2009 Senior Vice President - Human Resources
Covert, Geoffrey 59 2011 Senior Vice President - Retail Operations
Perry, M. Marnette 59 2003 Senior Vice President
Williams, R. Pete 56 2007 Senior Vice President
Henderson, Scott 55 2003 Vice President, Treasurer
Van Oflen, M. Elizabeth 53 2003 Vice President, Controller
Marmer, Lynn 58 1998 Group Vice President - Corporate Affairs
Dougherty, Kevin 58 2004 Group Vice President - Logistics
Kaufman, Calvin 48 2008 Group Vice President and President - Kroger Manufacturing
Burt, Jeffrey 48 2010 Group Vice President - Perishables Merchandising and Procurement
Shackouls, Bobby 60 Lead Director
Anderson, Reuben 68 1991 Director
Moore, Clyde 56 1997 Director
LaMacchia, John 68 1990 Director
Beyer, Robert 51 1999 Director
Rogel, Steven 68 1999 Director
Lewis, David 65 2002 Director
Phillips, Susan 65 2003 Director
Runde, James 63 2006 Director
Sargent, Ronald 55 2006 Director
Montoya, Jorge 64 2007 Director
Kropf, Susan 62 2007 Director
Address:
1014 Vine Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-1141
U.S.A.
Kroger's headquarters are centralized in downtown Cincinnati,[7] but it spans many states with store formats that include supermarkets, hypermarkets, department stores, convenience stores and mall jewelry stores. Kroger-branded grocery stores are located throughout the Midwestern and Southern United States.
The Kroger Co. (Kroger), incorporated in 1902, is a retailer in the United States. The Company also manufactures and processes some of the food for sale in its supermarkets. As of January 30, 2010, the Company operated, either directly or through its subsidiaries, 2,468 supermarkets and multi-department stores, 893 of which had fuel centers. The Company’s supermarket and multi-department stores operate under banners, including Kroger, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, King Soopers, Smith’s, Fry’s, Fry’s Marketplace, Dillons, QFC and City Market. Kroger operates 40 manufacturing plants, primarily bakeries and dairies. In addition to the supermarkets, it operated through subsidiaries, 777 convenience stores and 374 fine jewelry stores. Its fine jewelry stores located in malls are operated in leased locations. In addition, 87 convenience stores were operated through franchise agreements.
The Company’s supermarkets are operated under a combination food and drug stores (combo stores); multi-department stores; marketplace stores, or price impact warehouses. The combo stores are the primary food store format. The stores offer the specialty departments that customers desire for one-stop shopping, including natural food and organic sections, pharmacies, general merchandise, pet centers and perishables, such as fresh seafood and organic produce. Multi-department stores are larger in size than combo stores. In addition to the departments offered at a typical combo store, multi-department stores sell a selection of general merchandise items, such as apparel, home fashion and furnishings, electronics, automotive products, toys and fine jewelry.
Marketplace stores are smaller in size than multi-department stores. They offer full-service grocery and pharmacy departments, as well as an expanded general merchandise area that includes outdoor living products, electronics, home goods and toys. Price impact warehouse stores offer a no-frills, low cost warehouse format and feature everyday low prices plus promotions for a selection of grocery, and health and beauty care items. The items provided include meat, dairy, baked goods and fresh produce items. The average size of a price impact warehouse store is similar to that of a combo store.
The Company’s supermarkets, on average, stock approximately 11,000 private label items. The Company’s corporate brand products are produced and sold in three tiers. Approximately 39% of the corporate brand units sold is produced in the Company’s manufacturing plants. As of January 30, 2010, the Company operated 40 manufacturing plants. These plants consisted of 18 dairies, 10 deli or bakery plants, five grocery product plants, three beverage plants, two meat plants and two cheese plants.
During the recession of the early 1990s, Kroger felt the pressure of increasing competition in several of the markets it served. The geographic diversity of the firm's holdings, however, insulated it from serious trouble. Under the leadership of Joseph A. Pilcher, who became CEO in 1990, Kroger adopted a strategy of protecting market share at all costs, including sacrificing margins for the more important cash flow needed to pay off the debt. When faced with increased competition in a particular market--for example when Food Lion, Inc. expanded into Texas in 1991--Kroger would simply lower prices and accept the resulting reduced margins. In fact, Kroger lost money for a period in the early 1990s in Texas as well as in Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio. The company was able to offset such losses to some degree by relying more heavily on higher margin markets, although such markets were becoming rarer thanks to the expansion of low-price competitors.
Kroger also had to face the consequences of its unionized workforce and had to compete with nonunion chains. In addition to the increasing competitive pressures, Kroger's sales and earnings were affected in 1992 by a ten-week strike in Michigan and another work stoppage in Tennessee. Although the Michigan strike ended with the workers essentially accepting the package initially offered them, 1992 sales increased only 3.7 percent over 1991 and the company margin remained in the 0.5 percent range where it had resided since 1990. Consequently, Kroger embarked on a major program to improve its efficiency through technological improvements. From 1992 to 1994, $120 million was spent to make checkout operations more efficient and accurate, to install a new management information system, and to improve direct-store delivery accounting.
By 1994 Kroger's debt load had been reduced significantly, to $3.89 billion. Kroger enjoyed savings of almost $23 million in 1994 alone from its technology investments. The company also benefited from the economic recovery during which interest rates fell, thus reducing the amount needed to spend servicing its debt whenever it could refinance its loans. Enough money could now be freed up for Kroger to shift its focus from debt maintenance to expansion. The timing of this expansion was critical in that Kroger now faced yet another and significant threat, this time from supercenters--such as those operated by Wal-Mart, Kmart Corporation, and Meijer Incorporated--which were combination food, pharmacy, and general merchandise stores. By 1994 more than one-quarter of Kroger's sales base competed directly with a supercenter. Kroger's plan was to continue using its combination food and drug store format--facilities that were about one-third the size of the supercenters--but to increase their number dramatically.
During 1994, Kroger spent $534 million on the expansion, which included 45 new stores, 17 expanded stores, 66 remodelings, and the acquisition of 20 stores. From 1995 to 1997, $600 million was to be spent each year on expansion projects. Overall, this would be the largest capital expansion in Kroger history.
To free up additional money for the program and further reduce the company debt, Kroger in early 1995 sold Time Saver Stores, a division of Dillon which included 116 convenience stores in the New Orleans area, to E-Z Serve Convenience Stores, Inc. of Houston, Texas. Later that year, David B. Dillon, CEO of the Dillon subsidiary, became president and COO of Kroger.
Early returns from the company's mid-1990s expansion were positive. Kroger's 1994 margin of 1.2 percent was its best in several years, and 1995 saw a healthy sales increase of 4.3 percent. By 1997, when Kroger's grocery store count was nearing 1,400, the company enjoyed its best year yet--net income of $444 million on sales of $27 billion, translating into a 1.6 percent margin--while total debt had dropped to $3.2 billion.
Late 1990s and Beyond: Acquiring Fred Meyer, Squaring Off Against Wal-Mart
Its improving fortunes emboldened Kroger to join--in a big way--the ongoing consolidation wave that was sweeping the grocery industry. In October 1998 the company announced that it planned to acquire Fred Meyer, Inc. in a stock swap valued at about $8 billion plus assumed debt of $4.8 billion. The deal closed in May 1999. The Portland, Oregon-based Fred Meyer brought to Kroger 800 grocery stores located in 12 western states--a good geographic fit given Kroger's presence primarily in the Midwest, South, and Southwest. The Oregon firm operated several chains: the flagship Fred Meyer stores, one-stop shopping superstores averaging 145,000 square feet and including more than 225,000 food and nonfood products arranged within dozens of departments; and the Smith's Food & Drug Centers, Ralphs Grocery, and Quality Food Centers supermarket chains--the latter two having been acquired by Fred Meyer earlier in 1998. Fred Meyer, which reported 1997 sales of $15 billion, was also the fourth largest fine jewelry retailer in the country, operating 381 stores under five names in 26 states. The Fred Meyer deal enabled Kroger to maintain its position as the largest supermarket operator in the United States, with annual sales of about $43 billion, although the company soon ceded its position as the largest U.S. food retailer to the hyperbolically growing Wal-Mart.
Kroger wrung out significant synergies from its huge acquisition, achieving annual cost savings of $380 million per year. By 2000, revenues had swelled to $49 billion, while net income hit $877 million, signifying another jump in the profit margin, to 1.8 percent. Also during 2000, however, a deal to purchase the 75 grocery stores operated by Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. in Texas and Oklahoma was nixed by the FTC, which was concerned about the potential erosion in competition in the Fort Worth, Texas, market.
Combining to slow Kroger's growth to a crawl was the economic downturn of the early 2000s coupled with heady competition--particularly from Wal-Mart, which by undercutting prices charged at traditional grocery stores pressured the entire food retailing industry to keep prices down. Revenues only inched ahead, topping $50 billion for the first time in 2001, then reaching $51.76 billion the next year, an increase of just 5.6 percent over a two-year span. Profits, however, surged 37 percent, hitting $1.2 billion in 2002 (and representing a profit margin of 2.3 percent), as Kroger management reined in operating costs. Late in 2001, for example, the company launched a restructuring that involved the elimination of 1,500 jobs and the consolidation of its Nashville division into other divisional offices. During 2002 Kroger aimed to cut another $500 million in operating costs in part by shifting from a divisional buying structure to centralized, nationwide buying. At the same time, the company completed several small, fill-in acquisitions, adding 34 stores from Baker's, Furr's, and other grocers in 2001 and then buying 42 Raley's, Albertson's, and Winn-Dixie supermarkets the following year. By the end of 2002, Kroger was operating nearly 2,500 supermarkets and multi-department stores. About 350 of these outlets included gasoline stations, an initiative first launched in 1998 to generate additional revenue.
In June 2003 Pichler stepped down as CEO of Kroger and was succeeded by Dillon, who became chairman as well one year later when Pichler retired. The new leader's first year was a difficult one, punctuated particularly by labor disputes. Kroger's Ralphs chain, along with Albertson's, Inc. and Safeway Inc., endured a four-and-a-half-month strike in southern California--the longest grocery strike in U.S. history. That strike ended in late February 2004. Kroger was also hit by a two-month strike in West Virginia in late 2003 that temporarily closed 44 stores. The two disputes reduced the company's 2003 fourth-quarter profits by $156.4 million. Several other charges, including a $444.2 million pretax charge associated with goodwill impairment at the struggling Smith's chain, resulted in Kroger taking $801.3 million in after-tax charges for the year, reducing profits to just $314.6 million. Sales, however, increased 3.9 percent, to $53.79 billion.
Despite the disappointing results for 2003, Kroger seemed better positioned than the other major U.S. supermarket players to withstand the Wal-Mart onslaught. Its keen focus on curtailing operating costs was enabling it to hold the line on price increases, this in spite of the fact that its unionized workforce was better paid and enjoyed better benefits than the nonunion workers at Wal-Mart. Moreover, Kroger claimed to hold the number one or number two position in 43 of its 52 major markets. Future acquisitions and new store openings were likely to be designed to bolster the company's standing in these existing territories rather than to expand into new ones.
Principal Subsidiaries: Dillon Companies, Inc.; Fred Meyer, Inc.
Principal Divisions: Atlanta Division; Central Division; Cincinnati Division; Delta Division; Great Lakes Division; Mid-Atlantic Division; Mid-South Division; Southwest Division.
Principal Operating Units: City Market; Convenience Stores and Supermarket Petroleum; Dillon Stores; Food 4 Less; Fred Meyer Jewelers; Fred Meyer Stores; Fry's; Jay C; King Soopers; Kwik Shop; Loaf 'N Jug/MiniMart; QFC; Quik Stop; Ralphs; Smith's; Tom Thumb; Turkey Hill Minit Markets.
Principal Competitors: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; Albertson's, Inc.; Safeway Inc.; Royal Ahold N.V.
OVERALL
Beta: 0.38
Market Cap (Mil.): $15,075.23
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 620.64
Annual Dividend: 0.42
Yield (%): 1.73
FINANCIALS
KR Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 13.99 17.86 35.12
EPS (TTM): 1,667.94 -- --
ROI: 7.37 6.65 8.07
ROE: 21.86 8.80 13.03
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1902 as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company
Employees: 290,000
Sales: $53.79 billion (2003)
Stock Exchanges: New York Cincinnati Chicago
Ticker Symbol: KR
NAIC: 445110 Supermarkets and Other Grocery (Except Convenience) Stores; 445120 Convenience Stores; 447110 Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores; 448310 Jewelry Stores
Key Dates:
1883: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Bernard H. Kroger founds the Great Western Tea Company, one of the first chain store operations in the United States.
1902: With 40 stores and a factory in Cincinnati, the company incorporates as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company.
1929: Store count peaks at 5,575.
1946: Company changes its name to The Kroger Co.
1952: Revenues surpass $1 billion.
1960: Kroger expands into the drugstore business.
1983: Company acquires Dillon Companies, Inc. and begins operating stores coast to coast; the Kwik Shop convenience store chain is also acquired.
1988: Kroger fends off hostile takeovers by awarding shareholders with a special dividend, pushing its debt load to $5.3 billion.
1999: In a deal valued at about $13 billion, Kroger acquires Fred Meyer, Inc.
2000: Revenues top $50 billion.
Name Age Since Current Position
Dillon, David 59 2004 Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
McMullen, W. Rodney 50 2009 President, Chief Operating Officer, Director
Schlotman, J. Michael 53 2003 Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President
Heldman, Paul 59 2006 Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary
Hjelm, Christopher 49 2005 Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer
Barclay, Kathleen 55 2009 Senior Vice President - Human Resources
Covert, Geoffrey 59 2011 Senior Vice President - Retail Operations
Perry, M. Marnette 59 2003 Senior Vice President
Williams, R. Pete 56 2007 Senior Vice President
Henderson, Scott 55 2003 Vice President, Treasurer
Van Oflen, M. Elizabeth 53 2003 Vice President, Controller
Marmer, Lynn 58 1998 Group Vice President - Corporate Affairs
Dougherty, Kevin 58 2004 Group Vice President - Logistics
Kaufman, Calvin 48 2008 Group Vice President and President - Kroger Manufacturing
Burt, Jeffrey 48 2010 Group Vice President - Perishables Merchandising and Procurement
Shackouls, Bobby 60 Lead Director
Anderson, Reuben 68 1991 Director
Moore, Clyde 56 1997 Director
LaMacchia, John 68 1990 Director
Beyer, Robert 51 1999 Director
Rogel, Steven 68 1999 Director
Lewis, David 65 2002 Director
Phillips, Susan 65 2003 Director
Runde, James 63 2006 Director
Sargent, Ronald 55 2006 Director
Montoya, Jorge 64 2007 Director
Kropf, Susan 62 2007 Director
Address:
1014 Vine Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-1141
U.S.A.
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