PHOENIX — Kroger Co. — the parent company of Fry's Food Stores in the Valley — has moved back its target date to complete the supermarket giant’s $24.6 billion acquisition of rival Albertsons Cos. Inc. due to regulatory concerns.
Cincinnati-based Kroger (NYSE: KR), the nation’s largest operator of traditional supermarkets, now expects to complete the deal by Aug. 17. That’s the end of Kroger’s fiscal second quarter. It had previously been targeting the end of the first quarter this year, an expectation it had stuck with going back to when the deal was first announced in October 2022.
Kroger cited discussions with antitrust regulators and legal authorities for the delay. Kroger and Albertsons — the nation’s second-largest operator of traditional supermarkets and the owner of Safeway stores in Arizona — have been battling antitrust concerns over the deal since it was announced.
“We remain in active and ongoing dialogue with the Federal Trade Commission and individual state attorneys general regarding our proposed merger and divestiture plan,” Kroger officials said in a news release. “In light of our continuing dialogue with the regulators, we are updating our anticipated closure timeline. While this is longer than we originally thought, we knew it was a possibility and our merger agreement and divestiture plan accounted for such potential timing.
