Berkshire Hathaway announced an investment of $550 million in the Kroger Company representing 2.4 percent of the equity.  The Berkshire proportion of equity will be exceeded by holdings of the Vanguard Group (8.6 percent), BlackRock (7.2 percent) and State Street (5.0 percent).

Analysts are puzzled by the Berkshire Hathaway investment as they point to declining market share, extreme competition, declining return on investment and the ever-dominant presence of Amazon.com. 

Announcement of the Berkshire share acquisition resulted in a six percent increase in value in after-hours trading when the news was posted on Friday14th with Kroger closing at $28.23.  The share opened on Tuesday, February 18th after the President's Day weekend at $30.35 and then closed on Wednesday, February 19th at $29.54.

Kroger has a market capitalization of $23.7 billion and traded over the past 52 weeks in a range of $20.70 to $30.73.  KR trades with a forward P/E of 12.7 and the trailing-12 month return on assets was 3.7 percent and on equity 17.7 percent.  As with all retail grocery stores, operating and profit margins are low. In the case of Kroger attaining 2.1 percent and 1.3 percent respectively over the past 12 months.  As of January 31st 2020, four percent of the float was short.