Stop & Shop strike cost parent company $100M in operating income

The 11-day strike in April against Stop & Shop by employees belonging to the United Food and Commercial Workers took nearly $100 million out of the second-quarter earnings for the supermarket”™s parent company.

Ahold Delhaize, the Netherlands-based food retailer, posted net income of $374.6 million for the second quarter, a drop from the approximately $457 million generated in the second quarter of 2018. The company blamed the disruption created by the Stop & Shop strike for erasing roughly $100 million in its second-quarter operating income, as well as reducing net sales by $224 million.

Nonetheless, the company pointed to an increase in online sales and the performance of its other U.S. brands as evidence that the strike was an aberration in an otherwise successful quarter.

“U.S. comparable sales excluding gasoline were up 0.2% during the quarter, with the strike impact offset by the strong performance of our other brands, in particular Food Lion,” said said Ahold President Delhaize CEO Frans Muller. “Excluding the impact from the strike and subsequent period of sales recovery and the favorable timing of Easter, comparable sales excluding gasoline were up 2.3%. Our online business in the U.S. grew 14.4%, or 18% excluding the adverse impact of the strike and we remain confident that we can achieve over 20% growth in U.S. online sales in 2019.”