Supermarket/Grocery

Fred's Inc. saw July sales drop 7% to $154 million, compared to $165.6 million in the same period last year.    Comparable store sales for the month declined 4.6%, compared with an increase of 0.7% in the year-earlier period.   Fred's total sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2016 decreased 3.4% to $527.7 million, from $546.1 million for the same period last year. On a comparable store basis, second quarter sales decreased 2% versus an increase of 0.9% for the year-earlier period.

Publix’s sales for second quarter 2016 were $8.1 billion, a 2.1% increase from last year’s $8 billion. Comparable-store sales for second quarter 2016 increased 1.1%.    The company says sales were negatively impacted by 1.2% due to the effect of the Easter holiday being in the first quarter in 2016. In 2015, the effect of the Easter holiday was in the second quarter.  

Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. reported second-quarter net income of $37.2 million, which topped Wall Street expectations.    The natural and organic food retailer posted revenue of $1.03 billion in the period, narrowly missing Street forecasts of $1.04 billion, but topping last year’s sales by 14%.   Same-store sales grew 4.1% in the period.

Expressing a desire to deliver more professional services and back-end support to its wholesale customers, Supervalu announced that it would install Oracle Cloud as its new technology platform.   "The Oracle Cloud provides us with a more robust infrastructure and a comprehensive solution that we believe will help us drive increased efficiencies, speed decision-making, and enhance the overall customer experience,” said executive VP and CIO Randy Burdick.  

Wal-Mart Stores is in talks to buy start-up Jet.com, an online retailer that has styled itself as a challenger to Amazon, the Wall Street Journal reported.   The acquisition would give a big boost to Wal-Mart’s digital efforts, as well as its efforts to compete with Amazon. At the company’s annual shareholders meetings in June, Wal-Mart CEO Doug said the discounter planned to become more aggressive in growing its online business.  

CVS Health on Tuesday reported an increase of 17.6% in net revenues for the three months ended June 30, 2016, to $43.7 billion.

A Gainesville, Florida, mixed-use project now features a strategically assembled team to lead the property to its planned fall 2018 opening.   According to Butler Enterprises president Deborah Butler, the team of local, national and international design and construction professionals will work with Butler to create a world-class retail and residential core for Gainesville.   The team consists of:  

Deal volume in the retail and consumer sector is up, but deal value is down.   Deal volume in the second quarter in the sector reached its highest level in the past 12 months, with 282 announced deals, up 5% over the first quarter, according PwC’s Q2 2016 retail and consumer M&A report.