Kroger (KR) Tops Q3 EPS by 4c; Raises FY20 Guidance

Kroger (NYSE: KR) reported Q3 EPS of $0.71, $0.04 better than the analyst estimate of $0.67. Revenue for the quarter came in at $29.7 billion versus the consensus estimate of $29.97 billion.

"Our Kroger family of associates have been nothing short of incredible during the pandemic and they continue to inspire me every day. I am proud of our dedicated associates who continued to diligently execute our Restock Kroger transformation while serving our customers when they need us most.

We delivered strong results in the third quarter. Customers are at the center of everything we do and sales remain elevated as we continue to enhance our competitive moats – Fresh, Our Brands, Data & Personalization and Seamless. We are executing against our strategy even during the pandemic and continue to grow market share.

The strong underlying momentum in our core supermarket business and acceleration in the growth of our alternative profit business demonstrates we are successfully transforming our business model to deliver consistently strong and attractive total shareholder return in 2020 and beyond."

GUIDANCE:

Kroger sees FY2020 EPS of $3.30-$3.35, versus the consensus of $3.30.

Comments from CFO Gary Millerchip

"As a result of our continued strong performance, market share growth and the expectation of sustained trends in food at home consumption for the remainder of our fiscal year, we are raising our full year 2020 guidance. For the full year 2020, we expect total identical sales without fuel to be around 14% and adjusted EPS growth of 50% to 53%.

Our guidance contemplates continued investments in associates and customers plus ongoing COVID-19 related costs, balanced with continued execution of cost savings initiatives and growth in alternative profit businesses.

Looking toward 2021, we believe that our performance will be stronger than we would have expected prior to the pandemic when viewed as a two-year stacked result for identical sales without fuel growth and as a compounded growth rate over 2020 and 2021 for adjusted earnings per share growth."

For earnings history and earnings-related data on Kroger (KR) click here.

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