The Kroger Management Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Both our second quarter press release and our prepared remarks from this conference call will be available on our website at www.thekrogerco.com. After our prepared remarks, we look forward to taking your questions. [Operator Instructions]

On behalf of all of us at Kroger, we thank many of you for participating in our June survey. We strive to be exceptional listeners at Kroger, whether listening to our customers, our associates or our shareholders. We appreciated your time and honest assessments. We are also hopeful that you can join us for our 2012 investor conference on October 16 in New York. We look forward to seeing many of you next month for this important session with Kroger leadership.

I will now turn the call over to Dave Dillon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kroger.

David B. Dillon

Thank you, Cindy, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. With me to review Kroger's second quarter 2012 results are Rodney McMullen, Kroger's President and Chief Operating Officer; and Mike Schlotman, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

I am pleased with Kroger's strong performance in the second quarter. Kroger's shareholders once again benefited from our Customer 1st strategy. Increased customer loyalty and solid cost controls allowed us to grow sales, profitability and shareholder value.

In the second quarter, we reported record second quarter earnings per share. We increased identical supermarket sales for the 35th consecutive quarter. We increased identical sales in every operating division and every store department. We grew the number of loyal households in all divisions. We increased FIFO operating profit by $47 million. We increased tonnage over last year. And we put Kroger's strong free cash flow to work for shareholders by repurchasing 23.7 million shares.

Based on the strength of our second quarter results and the higher-than-anticipated share repurchase activity, we have raised our earnings per share guidance for the year and expect to achieve toward the upper end of our identical supermarket sales growth and earnings per share guidance. Mike will have more to say on our guidance in a few minutes.

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