The Kroger Co. will report second quarter fiscal 2026 results on Friday, September 11, with a conference call scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The quarter closed on August 15, and the company confirmed the date in a press release issued on August 14.
The print carries more weight than a routine grocery quarter. It is the first full period in which Greg Foran, appointed chief executive in February, has owned both the operating plan and the guidance attached to it, and it arrives with the company holding rather than raising a full-year outlook it set before he took the job.
In short
- Friday, September 11, 8:00 a.m. ET. Kroger reports second quarter fiscal 2026 results for the period ended August 15, with a webcast on the investor relations site and an on-demand replay from approximately 1:00 p.m. ET.
- The bar is roughly 1 percent. Management indicated the second quarter should look broadly similar to the first, with identical sales excluding fuel near 1.0 percent, the low end of the 1.0 to 2.0 percent full-year range.
- Digital is the growth engine. First quarter digital sales rose 19 percent year over year and the e-commerce operation reached profitability ahead of schedule, a milestone the company had targeted for the first half of 2026.
- The fleet is shrinking and growing at once. Kroger is closing about 60 unprofitable stores by the end of 2026, with more than three dozen already shut across 15 states, while increasing store openings by roughly 30 percent.
- Peer comparison is unflattering to the sector. Albertsons cut its full-year identical sales outlook to 0.5 to 1.5 percent after its own first quarter, so a Kroger hold at 1.0 to 2.0 percent would read as relative strength rather than absolute health.
What Kroger reports on September 11
Kroger announced the schedule in a release dated August 14, naming Rob Quast, vice president of investor relations, as the contact. The call begins at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, September 11, and management will comment on financial and operational results for the second quarter.
The webcast runs through the company’s investor relations site under Quarterly Results, with an on-demand replay available from approximately 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time the same day. The reporting period ended August 15, which means the quarter captures the back-to-school window and the early part of the late-summer trading period.
A Friday morning release is worth noting on its own. Retailers reporting into a Friday session give the market a full weekend to digest guidance revisions, and companies expecting a contested reaction sometimes prefer that shape to a midweek print.
Investors will get the numbers and the narrative in the same session. Because Foran has spent his first two quarters describing a plan rather than delivering against one, the commentary around execution is likely to move the stock more than the reported figures.
The guidance bar Kroger has to clear
Kroger set its fiscal 2026 outlook alongside fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results, and it has held that outlook rather than moving it. The three anchors are identical sales, adjusted operating profit and adjusted earnings per share.
| Metric | Fiscal 2026 guidance | Most recent reported quarter |
|---|---|---|
| Identical sales excluding fuel | 1.0% to 2.0% growth | Guided to roughly 1.0% for Q2 |
| Adjusted FIFO operating profit | USD 5.0bn to 5.2bn | Guidance held, not raised |
| Adjusted earnings per share | USD 5.10 to 5.30 | Q1 EPS reported at USD 1.46 |
| Quarterly sales | Not guided separately | Q1 sales of USD 46.1bn |
| Digital sales growth | Not guided separately | Q1 up 19% year over year |
Identical sales without fuel is the number that matters
Identical sales excluding fuel is the metric grocers are judged on, because it strips out both new-store contribution and the volatility of forecourt fuel pricing. Kroger guided the second quarter to look broadly similar to the first, which points to something close to 1.0 percent.
That sits at the bottom of the full-year range. A print at or below 1.0 percent leaves the company needing acceleration in the back half to stay inside its own guidance, which is why the second-half commentary is the more consequential part of the release.
Grocery comps also carry an inflation component that flatters or punishes the headline depending on the basket. Low single-digit identical sales in a period of modest food inflation can mean flat or negative unit volume, and analysts will press for the split.
Operating profit and the earnings range
Adjusted FIFO operating profit of USD 5.0 billion to 5.2 billion is the profit anchor, and adjusted earnings per share of USD 5.10 to 5.30 is the shareholder-facing translation of it. Neither was raised after the first quarter despite the e-commerce profitability milestone.
Holding guidance after good news is itself a signal. It usually indicates that management is funding an offset somewhere, and in Kroger’s case the stated offset is price investment, which the company has said it intends to increase.
Why Greg Foran’s first year is the real story
Kroger’s board appointed Greg Foran chief executive on February 9, 2026, effective immediately, and added him to the board. He succeeded Ron Sargent, who had served as interim chief executive since March 2025, ending an unusually long stretch of caretaker leadership at the top of the largest pure-play grocer in the United States.
The Walmart record he brings
Foran led Walmart U.S. for six years until 2019, running a division of more than 4,600 stores through what became a widely studied turnaround. Reporting on his appointment credits that period with 20 consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales growth.
The relevance is that the Walmart U.S. turnaround was built on store standards, in-stock rates and price position rather than on acquisitions or format experiments. That is a recognizable template, and it is the one Kroger appears to be running.
The pattern is not confined to Kroger. Walmart-trained operators have been moving into senior roles across the sector, and the spread of the Walmart playbook through retail C-suites has become one of the defining personnel stories of 2026.
Where he says the margin dollars are
Foran has described the funding mechanism plainly, proposing to go after every available margin dollar across the business and naming sourcing and procurement structures as particular weak points. The savings are earmarked for lower prices and better service rather than for margin expansion.
Grocery Dive reported that first quarter comparable sales underwhelmed while Foran concentrated on store improvements, which is consistent with a plan that accepts near-term softness to fix operating fundamentals. That trade is only legible to investors if the second quarter shows the improvement arriving.
The risk in the approach is timing. Price investment hits the profit line immediately while the volume response arrives with a lag, so a quarter that shows the cost without the benefit is the most likely shape of a disappointing print.
How the digital business changed the math
The most substantive change at Kroger over the past year is that e-commerce stopped being a loss leader. Chief financial officer David Kennerley said the business achieved profitability ahead of schedule, against a target of the first half of 2026.
Hybrid fulfillment and the retreat from centralized sheds
Kroger’s hybrid model uses stores as fulfillment hubs rather than routing volume exclusively through large automated warehouses. That architecture shortens the distance to the customer and spreads fixed costs across an asset base the company already operates.
The economics are straightforward. A store-picked order avoids the amortization of a dedicated facility, and for a grocer with national store coverage the marginal cost of adding fulfillment capacity is far lower than building it new.
Adjusted digital sales rose 20 percent in the fourth quarter, putting the channel at roughly USD 16 billion on an annualized basis. First quarter growth of 19 percent indicates the trajectory held into the new fiscal year.
Where that channel goes next is contested. Kroger has been assembling the pieces for a broader online assortment, and a marketplace pivot at Kroger would change the margin profile of the digital business considerably by adding third-party seller economics to a first-party operation.
The third-party delivery channel
Delivery partnerships with DoorDash, Instacart and Uber Eats are projected to generate more than USD 1.5 billion in sales this year. That is a meaningful contribution, and it comes with a structural tension every grocer now manages.
Third-party platforms deliver incremental volume at a commission cost and, more importantly, they sit between the retailer and the customer relationship. For a company whose central asset is loyalty data, ceding the interface has a strategic price that does not appear on the income statement.
The same tension is about to intensify. As agentic commerce moves into grocery and local pickup, the layer that chooses products on the shopper’s behalf becomes another intermediary between the banner and the basket.
The store closure program and what it signals
Kroger is closing roughly 60 unprofitable stores by the end of 2026. More than three dozen locations across 15 states have already closed, and the program was disclosed with a USD 100 million impairment charge attached.
The company characterized the financial effect as a modest benefit that it intended to reinvest in the customer experience rather than drop to the bottom line. That framing matters, because it means the closures are not a margin story so much as a funding mechanism for the price and service plan.
Simultaneously, Kroger is expanding. The company has signaled an increase in store openings of roughly 30 percent and has been breaking ground on new locations, which makes the fleet strategy a reallocation rather than a retreat.
Closing 60 stores while accelerating openings is a portfolio decision that reads differently from a defensive contraction. It suggests management believes the problem is site quality and format fit rather than the viability of physical grocery itself.
The merger that did not happen still shapes both plans
Kroger and Albertsons spent years pursuing a combination that regulators and courts ultimately stopped, and the two companies have been operating standalone plans ever since. The aftermath included litigation between the former partners, an unusual position for two businesses that had jointly argued they needed each other to compete.
The strategic consequence is that both grocers arrived at 2026 with plans originally written on merger assumptions. Scale benefits that were supposed to come from combination now have to be manufactured internally, which is precisely what Foran’s procurement and sourcing focus is designed to do.
That history explains the emphasis on margin recapture. A company that expected to gain buying power through consolidation and did not must find the same dollars through negotiation, private label mix and operational productivity instead.
It also explains the pace. Kroger lost most of a leadership cycle to the merger attempt and its unwinding, followed by nearly a year of interim leadership, which is why a February 2026 chief executive is still describing a plan in September rather than defending results from one.
Pharmacy, private label and the rest of the basket
Grocery results are rarely driven by grocery alone, and Kroger’s quarter has several moving parts that sit outside the food aisles. Pharmacy featured in first quarter commentary as one of the categories shaping the top line.
Why pharmacy distorts the comp
Pharmacy is a high-revenue, low-margin category, and it can lift identical sales while diluting gross margin percentage. When drug volumes or reimbursement mix shift, the headline comp and the profit line can move in opposite directions.
Analysts will therefore look for a comp figure with and without pharmacy. A grocer reporting 1 percent identical sales driven substantially by prescription volume is in a materially different position from one reporting the same number on food traffic.
Private label as the margin lever
Own-brand penetration is the other lever available to a grocer funding price investment. Private label typically carries higher percentage margins than national brands while offering the customer a lower shelf price, which makes it the rare move that helps both sides of the trade.
Foran’s stated priorities have included private label alongside fresh and e-commerce. Progress there would allow Kroger to lower prices on visible items without surrendering the margin dollars it needs to hold the profit guidance.
The constraint is that own-brand share cannot be forced quickly. Shifting mix depends on assortment decisions, shelf resets and customer acceptance, all of which move over multiple quarters rather than within one.
Three ways the quarter can land
The range of outcomes is narrower than it looks, because guidance has already been set and the comp expectation is public. What varies is the combination of comp, guidance treatment and digital margin.
| Scenario | What it looks like | Likely market read |
|---|---|---|
| Bear case | Identical sales below 1.0%, full-year range cut toward the Albertsons level | Sector demand problem confirmed; turnaround timeline extends |
| Base case | Identical sales near 1.0%, guidance reaffirmed, digital growth holds near 19% | On plan but unexciting; attention shifts to second-half acceleration |
| Bull case | Identical sales above 1.5% with positive unit volume and sustained digital margin | Price investment is buying traffic; guidance range narrows upward |
The base case is the most probable, because it is what management has already guided toward. The informative content of the quarter is therefore concentrated in the second-half commentary rather than in the reported comp.
The bear case is the one with asymmetric consequences. A cut would put Kroger’s outlook alongside a peer that has already lowered guidance, and it would recast the first two quarters of the Foran era as a slower repair than the market has priced.
What retail media and membership contribute
Kroger runs a retail media operation built on its loyalty data, and it operates a paid membership program alongside it. Both sit in the category of alternative profit streams that grocers have used to offset thin core margins.
Retail media matters disproportionately because advertising dollars carry margins that food retail cannot approach. A grocer able to grow advertising revenue can fund shelf-price reductions that a pure food retailer could not afford, which is the mechanism behind much of the price competition in the category.
Membership programs serve a different purpose. They raise switching costs and increase trip frequency, and for a business competing against warehouse clubs and mass merchants, the recurring relationship is worth more than the fee itself.
The two reinforce each other. Membership deepens the transaction record, the transaction record improves ad targeting, and better targeting raises the value of the media inventory, which is the same flywheel a marketplace pivot would extend by adding third-party assortment to the data set.
How Kroger compares with Albertsons right now
The cleanest read on Kroger’s quarter comes from its nearest comparable. Albertsons reported a materially weaker first quarter and, unlike Kroger, moved its full-year outlook down.
| Measure | Kroger | Albertsons |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 digital sales growth | 19% year over year | 13% year over year |
| Full-year identical sales outlook | 1.0% to 2.0%, held | 0.5% to 1.5%, lowered |
| E-commerce profitability | Reached ahead of schedule | Not reported as achieved |
| Leadership | New CEO since February 2026 | CFO preparing to step down |
| Guidance direction | Maintained | Cut |
The gap in digital growth is the most telling line. Six percentage points of separation on the fastest-growing channel compounds quickly, and it supports the argument that Kroger’s fulfillment architecture is working better than its peer’s.
Both companies are operating in the shadow of their abandoned combination, and both have had to build standalone plans that were originally written on the assumption of a merger. Albertsons cited softer industry trends and a more cautious consumer, which is a sector condition rather than a company-specific one.
That distinction is the crux of the September 11 print. If Kroger delivers roughly 1 percent identical sales, investors must decide whether the number reflects a soft category or a company still mid-repair.
What the loyalty data business adds
Kroger’s loyalty program covers approximately 95 percent of transactions, an unusually high capture rate that underpins both its personalization efforts and its retail media business. The company has said it intends to use those insights to deliver personalized offers customers actually value.
Retail media is the margin story sitting underneath the grocery story. Advertising revenue carries margins far above food retail, and for grocers with large loyalty datasets it has become the mechanism that funds price investment without destroying profitability.
Analysts are likely to press for disclosure on the alternative-profit businesses. Kroger has historically bundled these contributions rather than breaking them out in detail, and increased transparency would help the market price the difference between a 1 percent comp grocer and a data business attached to one.
The macro backdrop grocers are trading against
Grocery demand is not moving in isolation this year. Government benefit programs, tariff-driven cost pressure in general merchandise, and a cautious consumer are all shaping the basket.
Benefit rolls are one variable with a direct line to grocery volume. SNAP enrollment falling 13 percent removes spending power from precisely the customer segments that shop the value end of the store, and grocers with heavy exposure to those trade areas feel it first.
The warehouse-club and value channels have been reporting their own quarters against similar conditions, and BJ’s second quarter results in August offered an early read on how membership formats are holding up as households trade down.
Consumer behavior within the store is the other variable. Trade-down between national brands and own brands, smaller basket sizes with more frequent trips, and increased sensitivity to promotional depth all show up in grocery before they show up elsewhere in retail.
Grocers also face labor cost structures that do not flex with demand. Store payroll, distribution and the fixed cost of refrigeration continue regardless of comp performance, which is why a one percentage point swing in identical sales translates into a larger swing in operating profit than the revenue change suggests.
Food retail has largely escaped the tariff pressure that has dominated general merchandise this year, since fresh and center-store grocery is less import-intensive than apparel or electronics. That is a relative advantage, and it is part of why grocery guidance has been steadier than discretionary retail guidance in 2026.
What to watch on the call
Five disclosures will determine how the market reads the quarter, and most of them sit in the commentary rather than in the tables.
| Watch item | Why it matters | Bullish signal |
|---|---|---|
| Identical sales excluding fuel | The core health metric for a grocer | Above 1.0% with positive unit volume |
| Full-year guidance treatment | Tests whether the plan is on track | Reaffirmed or narrowed upward |
| Digital growth and margin | Profitability was reached ahead of plan | Growth near 19% with margin sustained |
| Price investment pacing | Determines the profit and volume trade | Evidence of volume response, not just cost |
| Store closure and opening cadence | Signals confidence in the physical fleet | Openings tracking to the 30% increase |
The guidance treatment is the single most important item. Reaffirmation after a soft comp would tell investors management still believes in the second-half acceleration; a cut would confirm the sector read that Albertsons already delivered.
The second most important is the volume split. Management commentary distinguishing unit growth from price-driven comp growth would let the market judge whether price investment is buying traffic or simply lowering the average basket.
What the September 11 print means for the sector
Kroger is large enough that its quarter functions as a category read. With Albertsons already guiding down, a Kroger reaffirmation would separate company execution from sector weakness, while a second cut would establish that US grocery demand is genuinely softening.
For suppliers and consumer packaged goods brands, the price investment commentary is the practical takeaway. A grocer intent on capturing every available margin dollar from sourcing is a harder negotiating counterparty, and Foran named procurement explicitly.
For competitors, the digital numbers set the benchmark. An e-commerce operation that is both growing near 19 percent and profitable changes what the rest of the category has to match, because it removes the excuse that online grocery cannot pay for itself.
There is also a read-through for the physical fleet debate across retail. Kroger closing 60 stores while accelerating openings by 30 percent is a bet that the format works and the sites were wrong, and a strong comp would support that reading.
The wider question is whether a turnaround built on store standards still works in a market where the growth is online. Foran’s Walmart record was made in stores, and the September 11 call is the first substantial test of whether that method transfers to a business where the fastest-growing channel never touches a shopping cart.
Kroger publishes results and the live webcast through its investor relations site.
Frequently asked questions
When does Kroger report second quarter 2026 earnings?
Friday, September 11, 2026, with a conference call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The quarter ended August 15, 2026, and an on-demand replay is available from approximately 1:00 p.m. ET the same day.
What is Kroger’s guidance for fiscal 2026?
Identical sales excluding fuel of 1.0 to 2.0 percent, adjusted FIFO operating profit of USD 5.0 billion to 5.2 billion, and adjusted earnings per share of USD 5.10 to 5.30. The company held this outlook after the first quarter rather than raising it.
What identical sales figure is expected for the second quarter?
Management indicated the second quarter should look broadly similar to the first, pointing to identical sales excluding fuel of roughly 1.0 percent. That would sit at the bottom of the full-year range.
Is Kroger’s e-commerce business profitable?
Yes. Chief financial officer David Kennerley said the e-commerce operation reached profitability ahead of schedule, against a target of the first half of 2026, helped by a hybrid model that uses stores as fulfillment hubs.
Who is Kroger’s chief executive and when was he appointed?
Greg Foran, appointed on February 9, 2026, effective immediately. He succeeded Ron Sargent, who had been interim chief executive since March 2025, and previously led Walmart U.S. for six years until 2019.
How many stores is Kroger closing?
Approximately 60 unprofitable stores by the end of 2026, with more than three dozen already closed across 15 states. The program carried a USD 100 million impairment charge, and Kroger is simultaneously increasing store openings by roughly 30 percent.
How does Kroger compare with Albertsons this year?
Kroger grew first quarter digital sales 19 percent and held full-year identical sales guidance at 1.0 to 2.0 percent. Albertsons grew digital sales 13 percent and lowered its full-year identical sales outlook to 0.5 to 1.5 percent.
How large is Kroger’s digital business?
Adjusted digital sales rose 20 percent in the fourth quarter, placing the channel at roughly USD 16 billion annualized. Delivery partnerships with DoorDash, Instacart and Uber Eats are projected to add more than USD 1.5 billion in sales this year.
Are tariffs a significant factor for Kroger?
Less so than for discretionary retailers. Fresh and center-store grocery is far less import-intensive than apparel or electronics, which is one reason grocery guidance has been steadier than general merchandise guidance through 2026.