This was suffering with its entire industry a few years ago but has figured out how to compete and is now doing extremely well. It has strong earnings. He expects acquisitions to be a bolt-on variety (e.g. niches). Grocery is a tough space because of entrenched competition from Amazon, CostCo and Walmart. He is not buying grocery stocks because of the difficulty of this space, but he is very impressed with the management of Kroger and their success in this space.

You have stocks that screen really well on a lot of metrics, and this company is one of them. It generates cash flow. The industry has been beaten up. There are some valid reasons for that, with a lot of big players coming into the grocery space, including Amazon (AMZN-Q) which has just annihilated businesses. What makes it challenging, is that they are dealing with consumers. She doesn’t like the consumer space, because there is no loyalty, and would rather be elsewhere.

The grocery space has been really, really tough. Underperformance relative to the market really shows that. There has been a lot of competition coming in such as Wal-Mart (WMT-N) and Costco (COST-Q). Now you are getting potential online entrants. If Amazon (AMZN-Q) decides to get into an industry, completely decimate margins, and operate at what seems like a loss in order to take share, it is really tough for incumbent competitors. She would be on the sidelines with this.

He has a small position because it is one of the top market share grocers in the US.  They have their organic line, private label, as a catalyst for growth.  This could help propel margin expansion.  Find it in the low $30s or below.  There may be some fund flows out of this stock in some funds and this would create an opportunity.

The grocery business is tough. Razor thin margins and very competitive. Food inflation is starting to fall back a little. This started to decline 5 months ago when there was changed guidance on the name, expecting things to fall off a little. This is also showing up in Canada. Also, he understands that Walmart had taken a lot of market share from them, not only in a general basis, but in very specific regional markets.

He would stay away from grocery in general. A major factor is food deflation, but even if the gross margin of a grocery store were to remain constant, and selling prices are lower, they are delivering less growth margin dollars against the fixed costs. The other problem is that a lot of the profit pools of the grocery industry are really under assault. There are hard discounters coming into the US like Aldi, Richard selling natural foods at incredibly low prices, working on very low markups. (See Top Picks.)

(Market Call Minute.) A little too expensive. A supermarket that is trading close to 20X earnings. Margins are traditionally extremely skinny in this type of business.