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Comment by iraqmtpizza | Hacker News Reader

so naturally the stock prices for these grocery chains should be skyrocketing. please show the stock prices for these companies or I will know fairly definitively that you are just doing stream of consciousness outsider art

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REWE seems like the only publicly listed grocery retailer in Austria:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REWE_Group

2022 numbers:

https://www.rewe-group.com/en/press-and-media/newsroom/press...

> combined net profit fell by 33.4 per cent, from 755.6 million euros to 503.5 million euros.

> Total revenue up 10.4 per cent, or 8 billion euros, to 84.8 billion euros

So 2022 profit margin of 0.5B/84.8B = 0.5%.

2021 profit margin was 0.75B/76.5B = 1%

That is spectacularly low, even Walmart manages > 1%.

Everyone else seems private so their financials are probably not available:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_...

wow, Metro AG's stock is doing horribly this year. but they're supposedly raking in tons of cash from Austria?

EDIT: SPAR Group, Inc. is doing very badly as well. I think this theory is highly suspect

If they're doing so poorly, why are they giving such steep discounts in Germany and not charging Austrian prices to bump up their margins? Are they stupid to leave so much money on the table?

There is significantly higher competition in Germany than in Austria when it comes to supermarkets. Grocery chains might very well want to push up the prices more to restore margins but might find it hard to do so.

The obvious answer is that they are not giving steep discounts in any country. Almost certainly their gross margins are between zero and three percent in both countries.

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