Kroger and Albertsons sales: profit and prices, 2026

Kroger and Albertsons sales grew slowly in their latest fiscal years, and both chains made about half the operating profit of the year before. Kroger's net sales rose 0.4% to $147.64 billion in fiscal 2025, which ran from February 2025 to January 2026. Albertsons' rose 3.5% to $83.17 billion in a fiscal year that ended in February 2026 and had an extra, 53rd week. This brief sets the two chains' filings beside Census sales figures for every U.S. grocery store and the government's grocery price index, for brands that sell into Kroger, Albertsons or both.

Every chart below is built from public data: the annual reports (10-Ks) both companies file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Census Bureau's Monthly Retail Trade Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The SEC figures are fiscal years, and the two companies' years end about a month apart. Where the page gives a reason for a change, it quotes the company's own filing and links to it. The sources, with links to the tables behind each line, are at the foot of the page.

Kroger and Albertsons sales by fiscal year

Kroger is the bigger of the two by a wide margin: $147.64 billion of net sales in fiscal 2025, against $83.17 billion at Albertsons. Albertsons has grown faster. Since fiscal 2019, the last year either company closed before March 2020, its sales have risen 33%, against 21% at Kroger. Both comparisons set years of the same length side by side: Kroger's fiscal 2019 and 2025 each had 52 weeks, and Albertsons' each had 53.

Albertsons' sales rose in every year on the chart. Kroger's peaked at $150.04 billion in fiscal 2023, a 53-week year, and fiscal 2025 was still below that.

Neither total is groceries alone. Both include pharmacy and fuel, and Albertsons reports "Net sales and other revenue", which also counts wholesale sales, commissions, rental income and media advertising revenue. The totals show how big each chain is. For how the grocery aisles did, the filings themselves say more, and the next section quotes them.

Slower growth since 2023, and extra weeks to allow for

Both chains had their biggest increase on the chart in fiscal 2020 and their second biggest in fiscal 2022. From 2023 on, growth was much smaller.

Three of the years on the chart had 53 weeks: Kroger's fiscal 2023 and Albertsons' fiscal 2019 and 2025. A change into one of those years compares 53 weeks with 52, which flatters it, and a change out of one compares 52 weeks with 53, which does the opposite. Albertsons' fiscal 2020 increase, the largest on the chart, was measured against a 53-week year and would have been larger still on equal terms.

Kroger's sales fell 1.9% in fiscal 2024, the only fall on the chart, but that year is measured against the 53-week fiscal 2023. Kroger's 10-K for fiscal 2025 takes the extra week out of 2023, and on that basis 2024 sales were almost exactly level. In fiscal 2025 sales rose 0.4%. The filing says the increase "was primarily due to an increase in total sales to retail customers without fuel, partially offset by a decrease in supermarket fuel sales and the sale of Kroger Specialty Pharmacy." For identical stores, it says sales without fuel rose "primarily due to increased pharmacy, eCommerce and Fresh sales and increased spend per item, partially offset by a reduction in the number of units sold." Shoppers spent more per item and bought fewer of them.

Albertsons' sales rose 3.5% in fiscal 2025, a 53-week year. Its 10-K credits higher identical sales, "with growth in pharmacy sales being the primary driver," and "the impact of the additional 53rd week." Its own breakdown of the increase puts nearly half of it down to the extra week. The same filing splits sales by product type, and the line it describes as consisting "primarily of general merchandise, grocery, dairy and frozen foods" grew more slowly than total sales.

Pharmacy is named in both chains' explanations, and Albertsons calls it the primary driver of its identical sales growth. How much of their growth reached the center store, where most packaged brands sit?

Operating profit fell by about half at both

Kroger's operating profit was $1.89 billion in fiscal 2025, down 51% from $3.85 billion and the lowest on the chart, which starts in fiscal 2018. It had peaked at $4.13 billion in fiscal 2022. The 10-K records $2.68 billion of "asset impairment and related charges" for fiscal 2025, counted in operating expenses and larger than the operating profit that was left. It ties most of that to "our fulfillment network not meeting operational or financial expectations, the planned closing of three automated fulfillment facilities and the cancellation of a planned site." The rest includes costs for "the planned closing of approximately 60 stores."

Albertsons' operating income was $0.73 billion in fiscal 2025, down 53% from $1.55 billion, in a year with an extra week. That is also the lowest on the chart, and it is the fourth fall in a row since the $2.44 billion of fiscal 2021. The 10-K says that in the fourth quarter Albertsons "recorded a loss" related to a framework to settle opioid-related claims, "included as a component of Selling and administrative expenses." The loss it reports is larger than the operating income that remained. The filing also says its gross margin rate fell, "primarily driven by strong growth in pharmacy sales, which carries an overall lower gross margin rate, and increases in delivery and handling costs related to the continued growth in our digital sales."

Both companies also publish adjusted profit measures that leave charges like these out. They are not the reported figures, and this brief does not chart them. When a retailer's reported profit halves, where does it look to rebuild it: shelf prices, its own brands, or what it asks of suppliers?

All U.S. grocery stores: sales have roughly matched prices since 2020

The Census Bureau's Monthly Retail Trade Survey adds up sales at every U.S. grocery store each month, chains and independents together, Kroger's and Albertsons' stores among them. This brief uses the seasonally adjusted figures, which Census corrects for the time of year, holidays and the number of trading days in a month, but not for prices.

From January 2020 to July 2026, grocery store sales rose 34%. The Consumer Price Index for food at home rose 32% over the same months. Measured from December 2019 instead, sales rose a little less than prices, and from the 2019 average about the same, so the safe reading is that dollar sales have roughly matched prices. When prices account for nearly all the growth in dollars, there is little left over for more volume. That is a rough sign, not a measurement: grocery stores also sell medicine and household goods that the food index does not price, and the food index covers food bought in every kind of store, not only grocery stores.

The two lines have not always moved together. Sales jumped in March 2020 and stayed well above prices through 2021. The gap narrowed through 2022 as prices climbed, and by the middle of 2023 the two lines nearly met. Sales pulled ahead again through 2024. Since August 2025, seasonally adjusted sales have barely moved, apart from a dip in February 2026, while prices rose, and the gap is back to about where it stood in 2023.

The last two years, month by month

Compared with the same month a year earlier, grocery store sales grew faster than grocery prices in every month from September 2024 to August 2025. In September 2025 the two were about level. From December 2025 to July 2026, sales grew more slowly than prices in every month. In July 2026 seasonally adjusted grocery store sales were 0.6% higher than a year earlier, while food-at-home prices were up 2.7%. Census marks July as preliminary and will revise it. In August, the newest month BLS has published, food-at-home prices were up 2.2%; Census has not yet published August sales. BLS published no price index for October 2025, so that month is blank.

The two chains describe 2026 in similar terms. Kroger's 10-Q for the quarter to August 15, 2026 again credits "increased spend per item, partially offset by a reduction in the number of units sold." Albertsons' 10-Q for the 16 weeks to June 20, 2026 says its revenue increase "was primarily driven by higher fuel sales, while identical sales declined," and describes "a more pressured unit environment and increasingly value-conscious consumers."

Are your own units at these two chains holding up, or is price carrying your dollar growth the way it has carried the channel's?

What's next for brands in the channel

Your own numbers at these two chains are where to test what the public data suggests. Across all grocery stores, dollar sales growth has trailed price growth since December 2025, and Kroger reported fewer units sold in both its annual report and its latest quarterly one. If your dollars at Kroger or Albertsons grew only because your price did, the buyer will know that as well as you do. Split your growth into price and volume, chain by chain, before the next line review.

Albertsons is also changing who decides. Its latest 10-Q describes a realignment, announced in July 2026, that "centralized center-store merchandising under a single enterprise team" and "aligns category management, supplier management, and merchandising functions across the enterprise." If you have sold to Albertsons one division at a time, who buys your category now, and when is your next review? At Kroger, the latest 10-Q says the company has agreed to acquire Giant Eagle and expects the deal to close in fiscal 2027, subject to regulatory clearance.

The same Albertsons filing says it is investing in what it offers shoppers "through a combination of pricing, Own Brands offerings, personalized promotions, digital capabilities, and improving the customer experience," with operating income already the lowest on the chart. Which of your items keep their place when shoppers buy fewer units, and does your price gap to its own brands still hold?

Scout reads the retailer portals and syndicated feeds these questions need. To see what the numbers look like for your own brand, ask below.