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☆ Here are stocks that win when inflation slows
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Yun Li | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Inflation moderated a tad in April, and so stocks that win historically when inflation eases could be big winners ahead if that trend continues. The easing in inflation could give a boost to stocks that have historically tracked the opposite direction of rising prices, according to Bank of America analysis. The Wall Street firm created an "Anti-Inflation" screen with S & P 500 companies whose relative performance has a strong negative relationship — or beta — with inflation. Amazon is on the top of the list with the strongest negative relationship to inflation. Consumer staples should also benefit from easing inflation, including Clorox and Kroger , which have historically moved in opposite direction to inflation.

☆ GrubMarket: 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Despite the scale of industrial farming, the produce supply chain, in which wholesalers and distributors get their produce to customers via grocers, local markets or restaurants, has remained fragmented. The goal, according to CEO Mike Xu, is to digitally transform the American food supply chain industry, while reaching $100 billion in sales — it is nowhere near that today — along the way. The company works directly with farmers and growers, as well as buyers, with a suite of software solutions that include inventory, warehouse management, grower accounting and mobile apps for food wholesalers and distributors. GrubMarket is now one of the largest suppliers of South American produce in the U.S. Last year, it was in the top 10% of suppliers for meat, peppers, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes and oranges in the country. It supplies 5% of all grapes and is the country's largest distributor of South American cherries.

☆ Bowery: 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Founded in 2015 in New York City, Bowery is among several urban plant factories that are changing food supplies, and attracting substantial funding. The need to grow produce more efficiently, and closer to end markets, is represented in Bowery and the concept of vertical agriculture. Early last year, Bowery secured a $150 million credit investment from KKR & Co. Overall, Bowery increased its retail distribution 40% in 2022, with supermarket chains Albertsons, Giant Food, Walmart and Whole Foods on board. Almost a decade on from its founding, the idea behind Bowery remains novel, but skeptics say vertical farming remains closer to a DIY niche than a grown up, globally scalable agtech industry.

☆ Macy's top retail media exec reveals the company's plan to use The Trade Desk to propel its surging $144 million ad business
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Macy's has signed a deal with adtech firm The Trade Desk to sell targeted programmatic ads. Macy's data can also find people who are likely to be luxury shoppers and buy big-ticket products. Advertisers pay for those ads using their trade marketing budgets that brands spend in exchange for selling products at Macy's. That spend is typically handled by ad agencies that purchase ads using digital ad buying platforms like The Trade Desk. The Macy's deal is significant for The Trade Desk as well and shows how the adtech company is expanding its influence within retail media.

☆ Walmart keeps grocery prices steady amid inflation, antitrust claims
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Siddharth Cavale | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

During the period, while U.S. inflation averaged 7.5% Walmart kept prices steady, the Dataweave analysis shows. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsThis was during a time when world food prices hit record highs and U.S. food-at-home prices rose in the double digits. Food-at-home prices, or prices of food bought at grocery stores and supermarkets, are expected to rise a further 6.6% this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The data set, which included batteries in the basket of goods, showed that Walmart sold Energizer batteries at a significant discount to rivals. Similarly, at least two different types of Energizer coin batteries sold at Walmart were found to be between 30% and 35% cheaper than the next lowest priced rival.

☆ Biggest Grocery Union Opposes $20 Billion Kroger-Albertsons Deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Jaewon Kang | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Kroger says it wouldn’t lay off front-line workers from stores that might need to be divested as part of a deal to acquire Albertsons. Photo: Asa Featherstone, IV for The Wall Street JournalThe United Food and Commercial Workers International Union said it opposes the planned merger between Kroger and Albertsons , adding to tensions over the $20 billion supermarket deal. UFCW International, the biggest U.S. union representing grocery workers, is concerned about what President Marc Perrone said was a lack of information provided by the companies about the merger, including on potential store divestitures. The labor group is also worried about the viability of stores that could be sold and whether buyers might be saddled with heavy debt loads, he said.

☆ Kroger will pay $68 million in West Virginia opioid settlement
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Kroger will pay $68 million to resolve a lawsuit in West Virginia alleging the company contributed to the oversupply of opioids in the state and failed to maintain effective controls. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Thursday announced the settlement in a statement. Kroger was the last remaining defendant in a state lawsuit involving Walgreens, Walmart, CVS and Rite Aid. More than 564,000 people died from overdoses involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, from 1999-2020, according to the latest CDC data. State and local governments have filed thousands of lawsuits against drug companies and wholesalers accused of fueling the crisis, resulting in a plethora of settlement deals.

☆ Meet 12 Walmart execs steering its $2.7 billion ad business as it races to catch up to Amazon
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Walmart is the second-largest retail advertising player, behind Amazon. The retailer is investing in talent, tech, and partnerships to grow its $2.7 billion ad business. Insider identified 12 execs in charge of growing Walmart's ad business. In 2022, Walmart's ad business, Walmart Connect, was $2.7 billion — up 30% year-over-year — making it the second-biggest e-commerce ad seller. Most of that market is currently owned by Amazon's $37.7 billion ad business.

☆ Kraft wants to remake the TV dinner
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Danielle Wiener-Bronner | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

On Wednesday, Kraft Heinz officially introduced Homebake 425°/:30, the company’s new line of frozen meals. Kraft HeinzFor Kraft, the new brand is part of an effort to increase the company’s net sales by $2 billion through 2027. As part of its earlier turnaround efforts, Kraft Heinz has been trying to reinvigorate decades-old brands like Velveeta and Oscar Mayer. In that time, frozen food prices jumped 16.3%, well above recent annual trends for grocery prices as a whole. In 2020, Kraft Heinz announced that it was divesting its natural cheese business.

☆ Kroger CEO reflects on how customer spending is adapting to current economic conditions
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailKroger CEO reflects on how customer spending is adapting to current economic conditionsKroger CEO Rodney McMullen joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss customer spending changes, Kroger's effort to increase employee wages, and the regulatory response to Kroger's acquisition of Albertsons.

☆ Aldi plans to open 120 new stores this year as the no-frills German grocer doubles down its US expansion
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Aldi is opening 120 new stores this year, including its first locations in two Louisiana cities. The supermarket chain will open 120 new stores this year, the company said. In January, Aldi opened a new distribution center in Alabama "to help support new stores in the area," it said. Aldi has recently opened or plans to open several new stores along the Gulf Coast in states including Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, Supermarket News reported. Aldi did not immediately respond to a request from Insider for more details on where it plans to open the new stores.

☆ Why Prices, Inflation Are Still Soaring: Corporate Price Gouging
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

While many of the problems that helped trigger the upward spiral have abated, prices are still high and getting higher. The idea that companies are taking advantage of disruptions to push price increases on consumers has many names — greedflation, excuseflation, price gouging, corporate profiteering — but the gist is the same. Supply-chain issues and other disruptions made sense as drivers of higher prices, Chris Becker, a senior economist and the associate director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, told me. "Working people are suffering thanks to corporate greed, so we need to enact tougher rules to ensure corporations pay a price when they price gouge." Working people are suffering thanks to corporate greed, so we need to enact tougher rules to ensure corporations pay a price when they price gouge.

☆ Adtech giant The Trade Desk strikes deal to solve one of marketers' biggest challenges in the $80 billion retail media space
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The Trade Desk wants to take a bigger slice of the $80 billion retail media market. Adtech giant The Trade Desk has landed a partnership that aims to solve one of advertising's biggest challenges in the $80 billion retail media space: getting timely data on how their ads are driving sales across multiple retailer sites and stores. Attain, which will charge advertisers on a CPM, or cost-per-thousand-impressions basis, will offer The Trade Desk advertisers metrics including sales, return on ad spend, and conversion rates. The Trade Desk is the largest independent adtech firm, and the company's moves typically indicate where the industry is investing. The Trade Desk is set to release its latest earnings report on May 10.

☆ Kroger will stop mailing weekly grocery advertisements in newspapers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Atlanta CNN —Kroger, the largest grocery chain in the United States, is ditching its long-running weekly newspaper ad circulars announcing the latest grocery specials. The ads for Kroger (KR) stores and subsidiaries, including Ralphs, Fred Meyer and King Soopers, will shift online. “Kroger is joining many retailers in shifting the way our weekly ads are distributed,” a spokesperson told CNN. The move could deal a blow to shoppers who plan their store trips based on weekly newspaper ads. Some companies, such as Walgreens (WBA), stopped printing coupon catalogs and moved their weekly advertisements online.

☆ Prebiotic soda Olipop approaches $200 million in annual sales — and CEO says Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have already come knocking
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-29 | by ( Amelia Lucas | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Prebiotic soda maker Olipop is set to cross $200 million in annual sales this year, just five years after it arrived on grocery store shelves. Olipop had raised $55.4 million as of Jan. 2, at a reported valuation of $199.8 million, according to Pitchbook data. Consumers are also increasingly interested in "gut health," one of the latest wellness trends. Both Olipop and Poppi have leaned into influencer marketing on TikTok, where gut health became a trending topic last year. But Olipop's Goodwin is confident that consumers are willing to pay more for the drinks he formulates.

☆ The world's 12 wealthiest people got richer by $36 billion in a day - and have now gained $264 billion in net worth this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Theron Mohamed | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and their peers have added $264 billion to their fortunes this year. The surge in their companies' stock prices this year has added $46 billion and $42 billion to their respective fortunes. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and L'Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt-Myers have gained around $27 billion, $25 billion and $23 billion each. The billionaire best friends have added $13 billion and $7 billion to their respective fortunes since the start of January. Meanwhile, the $36 billion of wealth they gained on Thursday rivals the the market values of grocery giant Kroger and Taco Bell-owner Yum!

☆ Stew Leonard Sr. Dies at 93; Founded ‘Disneyland of Dairy Stores’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Sam Roberts | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Stew Leonard Sr., a folkloric retailer who expanded his namesake stores into merchandising meccas replete with petting zoos and mechanical singing farm animals, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Manhattan. Mr. Leonard opened his original store in Norwalk, Conn., in 1969 as a destination that promised fresh milk because it was built around a bottling plant. “You’d have to own a cow to get it sooner,” his advertisements proclaimed. Bryan Miller described it in The New York Times as the “Disneyland of Dairy Stores”; “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” called it the “World’s Largest Dairy Store”; and it earned a place in the Guinness World Records for having the highest dollar sales per square foot of selling space. In 2015, Business Insider praised Kroger’s customer loyalty program and Wegmans’s walk-in beer locker, but it concluded that anyone who had ever set foot in Stew Leonard’s “knows it is miles above the rest.”

☆ Instacart, Walmart, and others are rushing to power streaming TV ads to capture a $5.6 billion opportunity for retail media
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

They hope to use shopper data to prove that streaming ads are more effective than linear TV ads. Instacart, Walmart, Kroger, and Best Buy are racking up partnerships with streaming TV companies like Roku and Disney. By partnering with retailers, streaming TV ad sellers can gun for the big budgets that CPG brands spend on linear TV, she said. Streaming ads are often pitched as being more targetable and measurable than linear ads. Both Walmart and Albertsons works with the Trade Desk to target streaming ads.

☆ Amazon could buy 100s of grocery stores being divested by Kroger and Albertsons, according to a top research firm
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Gloria Dawson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon has also shut some Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations. In a note published this week, the firm suggested Amazon could buy some or all of the divested stores from the planned Kroger and Albertsons merger. "Buying the divested Kroger/Albertsons stores should definitely be on the table at Amazon," the analysts wrote. That presents an opportunity for Amazon, Bernstein analysts wrote. The authors described several scenarios for the company, such as quickly rebranding stores or focusing on stores in particular regions.

☆ Your town might be sitting on pandemic cash it could use to build a grocery store or launch a guaranteed-basic-income pilot
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

They told him they were walking from their homes to Kroger, the nearest grocery store — which was at least a 25- to 30-minute walk. That got Miller thinking about building a grocery store, or even just a shed to sell fresh food from at a lower cost. He learned the city land committee had taken over the abandoned structure and that, way back when, it had been a grocery store called Abraham Grocery. Courtesy of Dural MillerNow, starting in November, it'll be a new grocery store, Miss Ruby's Corner Market, to serve the community. Baltimore, for instance, has used American Rescue Plan funds to give out guaranteed income to young parents for two years.

Lawyers for Kroger said in a filing in California federal court that the grocery store shoppers who sued over the deal have failed to define the relevant market necessary to evaluate grocery store competition and to identify how the acquisition would hurt consumers. The attorneys said the lawsuit was lacking "real-world facts." U.S. competition law "does not turn every grocery store consumer in the country into a roving antitrust enforcer," lawyers for Kroger told U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria. State antitrust enforcers also are looking at the deal. The case is Whalen v The Kroger Co, Albertsons Companies Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No.

☆ Jeremy Grantham can spot market bubbles. Now he's warning of an 'ominous' bust
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Julia Horowitz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

“Every one of these great bursts of euphoria, the great bubbles with overpriced markets … has been followed by a recession,” Grantham said. “When the great bubbles break, they do impose a lot of stress on the system,” Grantham said. What’s even more worrying is that this time, bubbles in the stock market and the real estate market are poised to burst simultaneously, Grantham said. The sector, which relies heavily on debt financing, has been hit hard by rising interest rates. Volcker raised interest rates to unprecedented levels to fight inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

April 11 (Reuters) - Mark Shafir, one of Citigroup Inc's (C.N) top dealmakers, is retiring after a career spanning over three decades during which he advised some of the world's largest corporations on several landmark deals. Shafir, who has led Citi's global mergers and acquisitions unit since joining the bank in 2008, will stay on till mid-May to help with the transition, according to an internal memo sent on Tuesday by Tyler Dickson and Manuel Falco, Citi's global co-heads of banking, capital Markets and advisory. Cary Kochman, who has served as co-head of global M&A at Citi alongside Shafir since 2017, will continue to lead the franchise. "(Mark) has been one of the lead drivers of our M&A business and has played a central role developing the franchise, which grew significantly under his leadership," Dickson and Falco said in the memo. Shafir was instrumental in shaping Citi's M&A franchise during his tenure and advised on several landmark transactions.

☆ Walmart is cheaper than Dollar General for groceries
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-09 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Dollar General has hiked food prices more than Walmart and Kroger, Bank of America analysts found. The study documented prices on a range of grocery items in February at retailers in Dallas, including Walmart, Kroger, Target, Dollar General, and Aldi, among others. At Dollar General, prices rose 36%, the steepest increase of all the retailers, Bank of America analysts Robert Ohmes and Kendall Toscano wrote. A comparable selection at Target totaled $194.15, while the cost at Dollar General was $201.14. Do you work or shop at a Dollar General and have a story to share?

☆ Beep! The barcode turns 50, who invented it?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Dayun Park | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

The barcode, that rectangle of thick and thin parallel lines seen on seemingly every grocery product, package, prescription bottle and piece of luggage is turning 50 years old. There’s hardly any products now that don’t use a barcode for identification.”Who got there first? A replica of a package of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum used in a Smithsonian museum exhibition. The Wall Street Journal, in a 2022 obituary of Collins, gives the nod of inventing the barcode to him. Years later, the Smithsonian had a replica of that Wrigley’s gum installed in a museum exhibition on the history of the barcode.

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