Traffic Growth (%)
Traffic growth refers to the growth in the number of customers visiting a retailer’s stores. It is one of the most important factors in assessing retailer revenue as higher store traffic leads to higher sales.
Guide to Grocery Industry KPIs
This guide highlights the key performance indicators for the Grocery industry and where investors should look to find an investment edge. While this guide is not a fully integrated grocery industry primer, as the market leader in granular consensus estimates data, Visible Alpha works with partners and clients to determine the key performance indicators in the grocery industry. This guide will aid market participants in identifying industry trends and the future performance of grocery retailers by region and service type.
Industry Business Model
Food retailers generate revenue from the sale of groceries and other goods, either online or offline. Retail revenue is derived from total sales growth. The total sales growth for food retailers is calculated as a sum of comparable sales growth and new stores sales growth. Comparable-store sales growth, also known as same-store sales (SSS) growth or like-for-like (LFL) growth is a key indicator for grocery retailers. It refers to the revenue generated from a grocery retailer’s outlets that have been operational for more than 12 months.
Comparable-store sales eliminate the sales impact from new store openings, closings, or acquisitions, to measure the sales growth of a grocer on a comparable basis. This makes comparable-store sales an important metric when analyzing the sales growth of a retailer. Comparable-store sales are a function of store traffic and store tickets. Store traffic is the change in the number of people visiting a store, and store ticket is the change in the spending per customer.
New or acquired store sales growth is the impact of change in the number of stores on the overall sales in a given period. It is calculated as the product of gross store space growth and new store productivity. New store productivity measures the efficiency with which a new store generates sales as a percentage of the efficiency of a pre-existing or same-store. New store productivity of 100% would indicate that the performance of a new store is on par with that of a pre-existing or same-store.
For food retailers, like all other retailers, retail revenue is equivalent to total revenue. Total revenue can be broken down either by distribution channels such as store-based and e-commerce or by modes of operations such as retail and wholesale. Store-based revenue and e-commerce revenue together form total retail revenue. For food retailers with wholesale operations, total revenue is the sum of retail revenue and wholesale & other revenue.
Grocery Business Model
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Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the most important business metrics for a particular industry. When understanding market expectations for grocery retailers, whether at a company or industry level, some KPIs to consider include:
Visible Alpha’s Standardized Industry Metrics
To understand market expectations for the grocery industry, a key information source is sell-side analyst estimates and consensus forecast data. The buy-side, sell-side, and public companies leverage this type of data to conduct competitive analysis, a type of analysis conducted by professional analysts that involves comparing standardized metrics of one company with those of similar companies. Because companies report metrics differently – and sometimes report on different metrics altogether – standardizing the key metrics for each company can be a cumbersome process.
Visible Alpha Insights includes analyst data, company data, and industry data at a level of granularity unparalleled in the market. Our industry data – Standardized Industry Metrics – enables market participants to quantify and compare market expectations for companies across 150+ industries.
Data as of January 2023
70
Global Tickers
756
Current Analyst Excel Models
837
Proprietary line items in our standardized operating metrics data
85
Contributing Brokers
427
Proprietary line items in our standardized financials data
1,264
Total standardized line items
Visible Alpha offers 6 food retailer-related and 9 hypermarkets & supercenters-related comp tables, comparing forecasts for key financial and operating metrics, to make it easy to quickly conduct relative analysis, whether you are interested in looking at key values for grocers globally, in the Americas, or Europe. Every pre-built, customizable comp table is based on region, sub-industry, or key operating metrics.
FOOD RETAILERS
- THE KROGER CO. (KR)
- Albertsons Companies Inc (ACI_US)
- Woolworths Group Ltd (WOW_AU)
- X5 Retail Group NV (PJP_DE)
- Magnit PJSC (MGNT_RU)
- Jeronimo Martins (JMT_PT)
- Kesko OYJ (KESKOB_FI)
- SPAR Group Ltd (SPP_ZA)
- Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc. (SFM)
- SpartanNash Co (SPTN_US)
- Empire Company Limited (EMPA_CA)
HYPERMARKETS & SUPERCENTERS
- Walmart Inc. (WMT)
- Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST)
- TARGET CORP (TGT)
- BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings Inc (BJ_US)
- Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (ATD_CA)
- METRO AG (B4B_DE)
- Carrefour (CARR_FR)
- Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize NV (AD_NL)
- Casino Guichard Perrachon (CASP_FR)
- Dino Polska S.A (DNP_PL)
- J SAINSBURY PLC (SBRY_UK)
- TESCO PLC (TSCO_UK)
- Sun Art Retail Group Limited (6808_HK)
- Migros Ticaret AS (MGROS_TR)
- Yonghui Superstores Co. Ltd.(601933_CN)
Industry KPI Terms & Definitions
Visible Alpha offers an innovative, integrated experience through real-time, granular consensus estimates and historical data created directly from the world’s leading equity analysts. Using a subset of the below KPIs, this data can help investors hone in on the key drivers of companies to uncover investment opportunities. Learn More >
Grocery stores
Grocery stores or food retailers are stores that sell a variety of general merchandise with a particular focus on grocery or food products. They include hypermarkets & supercenters, supermarkets, discount stores, convenience stores, and wholesale retailers.
Hypermarkets
Hypermarkets are large-scale stores that sell a variety of general merchandise and food products, with a considerable portion of sales coming from groceries. Store size varies considerably by market.
Supercenters
Supercenters offer a similar assortment of products to hypermarkets, with a focus on a full assortment of groceries, as well as personal care and household care, service counters, pharmacies, and florists. Superstores are traditionally larger than supermarkets and have expanded general merchandise offerings. Store size varies considerably by market.
Retail Sales
Retail sales is the sum of stores-based and ecommerce sales of a retailer.
Grocery Sales
Grocery sales is the sum of sales from different product categories including edible grocery, health & beauty, and household & pet care.
Store Sales
Store sales are sales that a retailer generates through brick & mortar stores rather than online operations.
Ecommerce Sales
Ecommerce sales is the revenue generated from the sale of goods or services through an online platform.
Wholesale and Other Sales
Wholesale and other sales include revenue generated from the distribution of products to businesses or franchisees, which then sell to the end consumers.
Traffic Growth
Traffic growth refers to the growth in the number of customers visiting a retailer’s stores. It is one of the most important factors in assessing retailer revenue as higher store traffic leads to higher sales.
Ticket Growth
Ticket growth refers to the growth in average spending per customer. A ticket denotes the amount each customer spends per visit.
Comparable-Store Sales Growth
Comparable or same-store sales growth refers to the revenue growth of stores that are open and operated by a retailer for more than one year. The ‘more than one-year’ criteria and the inclusion of ecommerce sales in comparable-store sales growth varies across retailers. This metric is used to determine the performance of the existing operational store.
New Stores Sales Growth
New or acquired store sales growth refers to the revenue growth contribution of stores that are operated by a retailer for less than one year. Often retailers include the 53rd week and other impacts in new store sales growth.
Number of Stores
Number of stores is the total number of stores that are operated by a retailer at the end of a given period.
Store Space
Store space is the square feet area of a retailer’s store. There are two types of square feet information that a retailer reports, gross square feet and selling square feet. Selling store space includes the selling area of a store such as the in-store space where the products are displayed and the checkout area. Gross store space also includes the non-selling area such as the kitchen, break rooms used by staff, storage areas, administrative areas, elevators, washrooms, and so on.
Average Store Size
Average store size is the average square feet or average space per store.
New Store Productivity
New store productivity measures the sales generation efficiency of new stores. It is calculated as new store sales divided by the increase in the area of stores added.
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Guide to Grocery Industry KPIs for Investment Professionals
This guide highlights the key performance indicators for the grocery industry and where investors should look to find an investment edge, including:
- Grocery Industry Business Model & Diagram
- Key Grocery Metrics PLUS Visible Alpha’s Standardized Industry Metrics
- Available Comp Tables
- Industry KPI Terms & Definitions
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