By Investing.com Staff
On its earnings conference call Thursday, Kroger (NYSE:KR) CEO William McMullen said customers are "aggressively" buying private label products, versus branded products, as they feel the pinch of inflation.
"... customers are aggressively starting to buy our brands and what they're finding is the quality of that product, and there's no compromise with that versus some of the other products," McMullen commented. "And if you look at our price spreads, we check pricing, obviously, every week. We look at pricing spreads for different types of customers. And those spreads continue to be where they've been or improving slightly has been the case over the last couple of years."
Kroger reported today that their 'Our Brands' identical sales increased 6.3% in the first quarter, versus a 4.1% identical sales increase for the whole company.
The news can be seen as a negative for name-brand product makers like Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), Mondelez (NASDAQ:MDLZ), Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL), Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC), General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS), Kellogg Company (NYSE:K), Clorox (NYSE:CLX), and Kimberly-Clark (NYSE:KMB), among others.