$KR Kroger Tape Reports
Per Ticker.id: $KR Kroger Tape Reports — 4 podcast mentions across 3 podcasts (30 days), latest 2026-08-24 22:02 UTC.
Kroger can't exactly rely on apparel and houseware sales to lower grocery prices like Walmart can. Since Walmart's also the biggest grocer in the country, it's got the whole economy of scale thing going on.
Mark Cohen — Marketplace · Does Canada need new energy partners? · 2026-08-24Walmart and Kroger and Costco and Home Depot and Target are still huge parts of our economy and our lives.
Erica Berris — Planet Money · Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answers · 2026-08-21I was getting ready to come out here to Boise, Idaho. I kept thinking, what the heck happened to the stock of Albertsons, the Boise-based supermarket chain? You might also know them as Safeways, Vons, or my late mom's fave, Acme. Here's a stock that's been really put through the meat grinder. I mean, just awful. A house of pain. Down 30% year to date and down over 68% from its highs set roughly 4 and a half years ago, in large part because they tried and failed to merge with Kroger, a deal that was shot down by President Biden's antitrust team because the FTC feared the two together would be way too powerful, could raise prices with impunity, screwing the consumer. See, Albertsons came public in the summer of 2020. It had previously been taken private by Cerberus back in 2006, and that was soon to be a great time to be in the grocery business. The pandemic had tons of people eating most of the meals at home, remember? The IPO price is $16. By early 2022, the stock was trading in the mid to high 30s. Then the world started going back to normal and the stock of Albertsons got clobbered down to the 20s. In October 2022, though, they got this takeover bid from Kroger for $25 billion in cash and stock. This would have combined the second and fourth largest grocery chains in America. America, creating a true powerhouse. Problem is, this was back when Lina Khan was running the Federal Trade Commission. She was reflexively hostile to pretty much all mergers. So the FTC took Kroger and Albertsons to court. They got this preliminary injunction against the merger in December 2024. And then the next day, Albertsons gave up, threw in the towel, said, no way, can't do it. Turns out Kroger might have really dodged a bullet here because Albertsons has been doing worse and worse ever since. Just look at the latest quarter, which they reported in late July. Albertsons posted a 0.8% decline in same-store sales, worse than the 0.5% decline Wall Street was looking for. Their gross margin shrank by 50 basis points. Their earnings per share came in at $0.42. Analysts were expecting $0.54. That was down 24% year over year.
Jim Cramer — Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer · Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 8/20/26 · 2026-08-20Same thing happened with Walgreens. They tried to buy the struggling Rite Aid back in 2015. FTC fought tooth and nail to block it because those were two of the big three drugstore chains. But Rite Aid couldn't stand on its own. Last year they shuttered all the stores. The deal got blocked and the drugstore industry still went from 3 to 2. With Kroger's acquisition of Albertsons, they would have combined two of the top four grocers in America. This incredibly competitive industry dominated by Walmart with roughly 20% market share. Kroger and Albertsons Kroger and Albertsons combined currently have less than 13%. That would have given them more scale to hold their own against a Walmart, a Costco, Publix, Amazon-based Whole Foods, and the foreign discount grocers that have taken over America like Aldi. At least, let's say, taken over by storm. I'd argue Kroger and Albertsons needed to merge to stay competitive in a tough business. The two together could be a great counterweight to areas where there's only a Walmart buy or a Costco. Both Albertsons and Kroger have lost market share over the years, and Kroger stock is down 10% year to date. Here's the bottom line: Albertsons is not doing well, to put it lightly. I think they should have been allowed to merge with Kroger years ago, but hey, you know what, maybe it's not too late. The Trump administration doesn't seem to believe in any antitrust enforcement, so maybe they should just give it another try. Consolidation is their best shot at staying competitive. Merge 'em. And let them compete against the big boys. Better for all of us, especially the shareholders of the other big company headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Everybody's back at the break. It is time! It's time for the a very special auto version of Lightning Round on Mid-Money. That's where I take your calls about Friday, same thing as I do on Buy Buy Buy, Sell Sell, if you go to the call stock, which is at the top of my Snapchats description. We're going to play this out and then the Lightning Round is over. Are you ready, Ski Dad, for the Lightning Round? Let's start with Ryan in Ohio. Ryan, booyah, Big Daddy Kramer, booyah, hit me! Hey, uh, I got a, I got a lump of coal and it's been under some pressure.
Jim Cramer — Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer · Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 8/20/26 · 2026-08-20I think that's kind of the golden question right now. I mean, this is something Matt mentioned, you know, for 14 consecutive quarters, Berkshire was aggressively hoarding cash, kind of signaling the broader market looked vastly overvalued. You know, breaking that streak to become a net buyer of nearly $20 billion in a single quarter, especially while the indices are sitting near all-time highs, I think it tells us that Abel through Berkshire, they're not just waiting, you know, for a market crash. It also doesn't mean that the entire market is cheap. I think we are seeing a lot of overvaluation in a wide range of sectors right now. To me, the bigger takeaway is that under Abel's leadership, Berkshire is aggressively hunting for those high conviction pockets of value. You know, you think about how they just boosted the Alphabet stake by about 83%, pouring $10 billion through private placement to fund Google's AI infrastructure recently. You're looking at a roughly $38 billion bet that vaults Alphabet into Berkshire's top 3 holdings alongside Apple. And American Express. So I would argue that Abel, he isn't throwing out the value investing playbook, but I think he's modernizing it for the current era that we're in with a lot of focus on the dominant tech infrastructure that is fueling a lot of the current stock market and the broader global economy. And I know we'll talk about this a bit more in a second, but what makes this shift really interesting is how Abel funded it by cleaning house, trimming some of those financial and retail stakes like Bank of America, Kroger, and then funneling that right back into a lot of these bets into the future of tech and AI. And I find that to be a really, really fascinating shift.
Rachel Warren — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Berkshire Hathaway Hasn’t Done This in Over 3 Years · 2026-08-17The headlines that Rachel just mentioned, one, Bank of America was the largest sell by dollar volume. But this is the 5th consecutive quarter they've trimmed that stake, so I'm not sure I'd call that a surprise by any, any stretch. It's still one of the top 5 holdings in the portfolio, still 9.3% stake in the company. Trimmed a few other financials. Capital One was cut by more than half. Ally Financial was slightly trimmed. Ally generally seems like they trim it to keep the stake just under 10%. Over time, they buy back stock and the stake goes up. They reduced exposure to Nucor during the quarter. For me, the biggest surprise out of the sells was trimming that stake in Kroger that Rachel mentioned. That was the one that really stood out to me right now. If I'm looking at what's going on geopolitically, if I'm looking at what's going on, just talking to friends about how they feel about the economy and where, where they're having to cut back, it seems like not a great time to be getting rid of a company that people have to go to no matter what. So it seems like a cautious play that I would expect, especially a company like Berkshire to hold onto. An environment like this, but that's the one that really stood out to me as a surprise.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Berkshire Hathaway Hasn’t Done This in Over 3 Years · 2026-08-17Rachel, do you agree or disagree with what Matt just said? Because I think I kind of agree with what Matt said. You look at the market, it's at an all-time high. There's a lot of fast-moving pieces of the market, especially with AI just constantly changing things. And we ask, is this company going to have a business model in 2 years, 3 years, right? So a lot of things change and it just seems like in a portfolio, having a bellwether grocery store business in there, even if it's a small stake such as Kroger, but it makes a lot of sense. I can see the rationale for having that. To trim that at a time like that, it does strike me as unusual.
Jon Quast — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Berkshire Hathaway Hasn’t Done This in Over 3 Years · 2026-08-17Well, you think you do. You see what I'm saying? It can corrupt. It can corrupt. And it's a lot like what I saw in my law enforcement career. You just want to belong. You want to fit in somewhere. And yeah, I was pretty evil. So that's really why I don't do it now. I don't have a problem. I've had roommates, my best friends do it. We'll cook it up, whatever. But as far as me pricing it out and learning what all I got to do, I'm like, I'll just go to Kroger. I'll just get— let's buy it there. But I was doing things like I had a Volkswagen Bug, oddly enough, for my first vehicle. So you got to get that worked on at a different place, right?
Scott Payne — The Shawn Ryan Show · #331 Scott Payne - FBI Undercover Agent Reveals the Most Disturbing Cases of His Career · 2026-08-17