On another platform, there was an interesting public price observation made by a consumer customer. With a picture and dates. In this case, from K-market.
A coffee package was highlighted with a ‘Permanently Affordable’ label. Over a five-week period, however, the price of the coffee package highlighted by the label had risen by 11%.
It doesn’t seem very permanently affordable. It seems more misleading. And it raises questions. Was this the only case, or is this being done more widely?
If changed costs or inflation are cited as the reason, the price tag could at least have been removed.
If this practice is true, Kesko might be playing with consumers’ trust, as well as the credibility of the Kesko brand and price campaign.
Even at the risk that this belongs more in the “My Experiences” thread, I felt my observations were similar. Now that I’ve also checked the receipts from the K-Ruoka app, at least in my local Citymarket, for example, the price of “Permanently affordable” fruit soup has indeed risen by a couple of percent in recent weeks.
But this is apparently how it’s intended, so there’s no “news” in that.
But if we’re being completely honest, that campaign, in my opinion (and many others writing here), seems to have been a bit of a miss in many ways, and the image marketing has turned comical when something like Juhla Mokka has been sold under it for 7-8 euros, etc.
I, for one, shop at K-stores despite that campaign (and chuckling a bit at it), not because of it. Kesko is not going to win the price competition; hardly anyone (including the company’s management) thinks it will. The competitive advantage in the grocery trade must come from quality, selection, location, brand, and such. And more broadly, the investment case relies on completely different things, such as profitability, other business operations, etc.
As the trade war seems to subside, this brings growth to construction and housing trade. It is true that cyclical sectors benefit first from the end of the trade war, as they have been heavily punished. The next wave is construction, home furnishing, and a diverse rise in consumption. Kesko offers supply in these segments. A nice increase in results is available with a good dividend. At least dividend investors will be pleased.
I more than tenfold increased my voting power in a few months, but now the B-shares have run out and my portfolio holds only top-tier A-class shares.
Even tenfold increasing my voting power still doesn’t make the general meeting look up from its coffee cup, but getting another twenty shares just by clicking the mouse is fine by me.
I was last holding A-shares during the corona panic, after which, once the price difference normalized, I had already managed to switch to B-shares. Now, a new market situation created sufficient arbitrage to switch back.
As a dividend investor, I gladly take the excellent advantage that Series A offers. Why not buy a good dividend more cheaply, which Series A often offers in relation to Series B?
Exactly, and that’s precisely why I dared to stretch the concept of arbitrage from my perspective to Kesko’s shares.
In the general sense, it’s not pure arbitrage because voting power has traditionally had some value, which is why A-shares are usually more expensive. For my part, I dared to call it arbitrage because the voting power of my position does not sway the general meeting in any direction, meaning my choice is dictated by the lower purchase price.
During major changes, the more liquid B-share reacts faster, which turned the prices “upside down” for the second time within 5 years.
Nevertheless, one should be careful trading A-shares, because the trading volume is so small that an order for a few hundred shares already eats deep into the ask side or even through it. This doesn’t bother me, because I am willing to hold my Kesko shares for however long as long as the company continues its good performance. I will only sell my Kesko shares to buy a larger bundle of the cheaper share class.
I also always buy the cheaper series at the time. Of course, I’m just building up my position, and the recovery of construction is the key thing for me in Kesko, not so much the grocery trade.
The intention was to comment on @Alamaki’s post, which gave the impression that the dividend for series A would be larger than for B.
Well, that message didn’t claim that. The message said: “Why not buy a good dividend more cheaply, which the A-series often offers in relation to the B-series.”
I.e., you get the same return with a cheaper series share. So the dividend yield improves due to the cheaper purchase price.
It wasn’t claimed, and I didn’t claim that either However, that impression can be formed when nothing is mentioned about the dividend yield percentage.
Probably so, but I didn’t even notice that interpretation possibility myself, as I’ve been switching between A and B series. Still, a good clarification from Kesko’s direction in this discussion.
A good April for Kesko in its domestic target markets
The growth in the grocery trade reflects the shift of Easter from March 2024 to April 2025. However, market growth is not solely explained by this, as April had one less delivery day compared to the reference period. Kesko stated in connection with its Q1 report that the impact of Easter on the growth percentage would be in the range of 3-3.5%.
In the building and home improvement trade, development was even stronger, and logically, the impact of Easter here would be smaller than in the grocery trade.
April 2025 was warmer than usual, so this likely had a positive impact on the building and home improvement market:
Sales figures are expected tomorrow, so then we will see how well Kesko has capitalized on the good market development.
Kesko’s sales grew by 4.1% in April. Comparably, sales grew by 3.5%.
“Kesko’s sales grew by 4.1% in April. Sales grew in the grocery trade and car trade, and decreased in the building and technical trade. The timing of Easter in April positively contributed to the development of grocery trade sales. In the building and technical trade, sales grew in the hardware store business. There were two fewer delivery days in Denmark and Norway and one fewer in other countries than in the previous year. In the car trade, sales grew in new and used cars and decreased in services,” says Kesko’s President and CEO Jorma Rauhala.
Grocery trade sales in April were €554.9 million, growing by 8.7%. Grocery sales to K-food stores grew by 10.3%. The impact of Easter’s timing on April sales was approximately +3.4 percentage points. K-Citymarket’s home and specialty goods sales grew. Kespro’s sales grew by 4.1%.
Building and technical trade sales in April were €398.6 million, decreasing by 3.6%. Comparably, sales decreased by 5.0%. Hardware store sales grew by 3.8% and comparably by 1.3%. In Denmark, Roslev Trælasthandel A/S has been part of Kesko since 1 February 2025. Technical trade sales decreased comparably by 10.5%. Comparably, total sales for the division decreased by 1.6% in Finland, 11.4% in Sweden, and 14.5% in Norway, and grew by 11.5% in Denmark.
Car trade division sales in April were €119.4 million, growing by 12.2%. In the car trade, sales grew comparably by 13.4%. Sales grew in new and used cars and decreased in services within the car trade. Sports trade sales decreased by 3.7%.
Kesko Group’s sales in April 2025 totaled €1,070.8 million, growing by 4.1%.
@henrielo wrote about Food Days, and at least under the heading " S-group dominates the grocery market" there is interesting reading for those following this thread, where excerpts from @Arhi_Kivilahti’s presentation are quoted.
First, regarding the growth in consumer goods sales. Kesko has been conducting very aggressive sales this spring at the expense of margins. For example, currently, all products in Citymarket’s online store are offered with a 60% discount.
The growth in grocery sales was even surprisingly large, considering all Easters and other factors. Unfortunately, I still don’t see what would have suddenly reversed the development of recent years in that regard. In any case, May’s figures are even more interesting than usual in that respect. If even the loss of market share could be stopped, that would already be a good thing.
In the RT sector, in my opinion, the company management’s statements and reality do not currently align.
And car sales are, of course, doing great, as has become familiar.
Summa summarum. Overall, the figures are positive if one believes that a major turnaround has occurred in grocery sales. If, however, one does not believe this, it turns negative, and quite significantly so.
How reliable can that Nordea card data be considered regarding the development of the grocery market share? It’s unlikely that the trend would suddenly reverse in one month, at least not significantly. In my own estimation, Kesko has still lost market share in April.
The data is not perfect, but it has given an indication of the kind of growth achieved recently. Nordea’s share of deposits in Finland (I couldn’t find data on payment statistics with a quick Google search) is about one third, so if for some reason OP’s customers have behaved differently compared to Nordea’s customers, then forecasting market development based on Nordea’s card data will prove incorrect. PTY’s official market figures for April will be available on the last business day of May, so by then we will be wiser.
A quick analysis shows that when both time series are normalized into Y-o-Y level indices (Jan 2023 – Apr 2025), the Pearson correlation is r ≈ 0.72 (p-value < 0.001). Spearman’s rank correlation is even slightly higher (ρ ≈ 0.77), which confirms that the relationship also holds non-linearly. A 4-week moving average formed from weekly published Nordea data explains about 52% of the variation in Kesko sales. Furthermore, a short-term cross-correlation indicates that Nordea card data leads Kesko by 1–2 weeks (maximum correlation r ≈ 0.79 with a lag of +1 week), so with this simple model, it serves as a very useful leading indicator.
Admittedly, Nordea’s card data for one payment method covers only 78% of the (Nordea customers’) grocery trade, but still, a simple OLS model yields ≈ 0.85, meaning a 1 percentage point change in the Nordea index is reflected as about a 0.85 percentage point change in Kesko sales. So, all in all, Nordea’s card series is a very effective and up-to-date tool for understanding grocery trade trends.
However, that impression can be formed when nothing is mentioned about the dividend yield percentage.
