Kroger (KR) FY2025 results: revenue $147.6 billion, up 0.4% on the year

Kroger was founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1902, and is built on a retail grocery business with pharmacies and fuel centres attached. It states that its strategy is to grow households and increase customer loyalty by delivering value and convenience, investing in fresh food, its own brands, personalisation and e-commerce. What it earns comes mainly from selling consumer products in its stores and fuel centres and online, at prices above the cost of getting those products to customers, which covers procurement and distribution, facility occupancy and operating costs and overheads. The data and traffic the retail business generates also feed a faster-growing, high operating margin alternative profit business including third-party media, whose value is reinvested back into retail. The fiscal year ends on the Saturday closest to 31 January.

The stores

At 31 January 2026 the company operated supermarkets under a variety of local banner names in 35 states and the District of Columbia, 2,697 of them in total, of which 2,250 had pharmacies and 1,731 had fuel centres. Approximately 51% of the supermarkets sat in company-owned facilities, including some company-owned buildings on leased land. Fuel is an important part of what it earns and of its loyalty offer, and the strategy is to put a fuel centre at each supermarket where that is feasible and profitable, each one typically holding four to nine islands of dispensers and tanks for 35,000 to 50,000 gallons. The company states that it intends to keep investing in new stores, deepening penetration in existing markets, entering new geographies and reaching new customers.

Online

Pickup and the Harris Teeter ExpressLane service, where customers order online and collect in store, run at 2,408 supermarkets, and delivery reaches substantially all customers, with apps and interfaces meant to work consistently across stores and digital channels. Delivery orders come out of retail stores, out of customer fulfilment centres, and through third-party platforms. It states that it continues to make meaningful improvements in e-commerce and believes it will be an important growth driver and one of the main ways to attract new households.

Media and data

Kroger Precision Marketing, the retail media business, uses first-party data and customer relationships to sell targeted, measurable advertising to consumer-packaged goods companies and other partners. Advertisers reach customers across on-site search, display, social media, connected television and in-store placements, and the company argues that linking media impressions directly to household transactions across digital and in-store purchases lets its partners measure how advertising spending turns into purchases. It treats retail media as a key contributor to the alternative profit strategy of earning from assets that complement the core grocery business, and says its margin compares well with traditional operations. The company serves approximately 63 million households a year and, because of its rewards programme, over 95% of customer transactions are tied to a loyalty card, data it has been building capability around for over 20 years.

Own brands

Own brand products are either made in the company's own plants or by outside manufacturers under its trademarks, or are fresh and service-case products prepared to its merchandising and quality standards without carrying a registered brand. Supermarkets stock over 13,000 private label items on average. The range is sold in three tiers, Private Selection as the premium brand, the Kroger brand covering most private label items and designed to meet or exceed national brands on taste and efficacy, and Smart Way as the value brand, with Simple Truth alongside them as the natural and organic line. Approximately 20% of own brand units sold in the supermarkets are made in its own plants and the rest produced to its specifications outside, the choice resting on a make or buy analysis comparing a market-based transfer price against open market purchases. At 31 January 2026 it owned 33 food production plants: 14 dairies, nine deli or bakery plants, five grocery product plants, two beverage plants, one meat plant and two cheese plants.

Seasons and people

The majority of what the company takes in is not seasonal, though sales run higher around the major holidays, and events such as winter storms affect sales trends. At 31 January 2026 it employed more than 403,000 full-time and part-time people. More than two-thirds of them are covered by collective bargaining agreements negotiated with local unions affiliated to several international unions, with approximately 350 such agreements, usually running three to five years and covering wages, health care and pensions. The company states that its aim in those negotiations is to keep wages competitive with union and non-union employers, provide affordable healthcare and keep groceries affordable, while keeping the business sustainable.

From Kroger's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 January 2026. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 31 March 2026: read the full 10-K.