Skip navigation

High-End Food Stocks Top Performers in 1st Half

AUSTIN, Texas — Whole Foods Market here led all food retailer and wholesaler stocks tracked by SN in the first half of 2012 with a gain of 37.69%, continuing a three-year-plus run of industry-leading gains.

It was followed closely by its primary supplier, natural and organic specialist United Natural Foods Inc., whose shares grew 37.12%, and its smaller, high-end retail rival, The Fresh Market, which saw a 34.41% gain in share price in the first half. Whole Foods ended June with a share price of $95.32, UNFI closed at $54.86 and The Fresh Market at $53.63.

DOWNLOAD FREE PDFS:
• Half-Year Supermarket Stock Price Table
• Half-Year Gainers and Decliners Table

“Both Whole Foods and The Fresh Market are targeting a consumer base that is less impacted by the economic headwinds out there,” said Chuck Cerankosky, an analyst at Northcoast Research, Cleveland, referring the high-end demographic of the two chains’ customer base.

Most of the traditional supermarket operators saw their shares decline through the first six months of the year, with Minneapolis-based Supervalu at the bottom of the SN Index, losing 34.18% of its share price, to close at $5.18. Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. was off 3.29% to close at $23.19, and Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway lost 12.23% of its share value, to $18.15. Buoyed by double-digit gains at some large retailers, however — including Wal-Mart Stores, Target Corp. and Coscto Wholesale — overall the SN Index was up 13.25% through June, vs. gains of 5.42% for the Dow Jones Index and 8.31% for the S&P 500 Index.

The data are provided by Data Network, Huntington, N.Y.

Hide comments

Comments

  • Allowed HTML tags: <em> <strong> <blockquote> <br> <p>

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Publish