There is no achievable scale in online grocery shopping without large increases in price from any of the major food chains. Even Iceland who basically have the easiest job as they have nothing fresh are struggling with the economics of internet shopping vs their previous model.

Aldi/Lidl and Waitrose are stealing chunks of market share because they are either ignoring this and just focusing on the standard model but with hyper thin margins (Aldi and Lidl), or they have large enough margins built into their product that home delivery is scalable and profitable (Waitrose). Everyone else is stuck in the middle and either has to raise prices to pay for their online operation (alienate their core, value shoppers), or scrap the online operation and alienate their hyper spenders who expect home delivery and all just leave for the high margin operators.

Tesco is particularly vulnerable to this, due to it's reliance on the large, hub stores that are most redundant in the face of this type of market shift - why would anyone waste money time traveling to Tesco to shop when you can get food delivered by Waitrose/Iceland anytime you want, walk to the local, higher margin supermarket (M&S in particular), or drive the same distance and pay half the price at Aldi/Lidl?

no; for example, the new Sainsbury/Netto JV discount stores are smaller; about 11,000 square feet. The Tesco superstores are about 30,000 square feet.

The same thing is happening in the US, although apparently to a lesser degree; people are less inclined to shop at the large-format Wal-Mart stores and are moving toward smaller stores like the dollar stores; Wal-Mart is expanding its smaller Neighborhood Market stores much more quickly now.

Similar thing here. We have tesco express.

ouch, SBRY dropped another 8.24% today. I'm wondering whether it's becoming worth trying to catch this falling knife and if the tesco accounting scare might be causing an overreaction

edit: nvm thats because they issued a sales warning

Bit of an investing noob so I hope you guys can help me out with this:

SBRY tangible book value per share [(total common equity - intangible assets) / nr of shares outstanding] shows up as £3.00 whereas current share price is £2.34? Sainsburys appears to be trading at a discount to what it's worth dead and sold off, surely something is amiss in what I've done?

it's not

retailers have lease liabilities that are off- balance sheet, so you couldn't just liquidate the company for £3, you'd still owe the landlords.

if it drops a little more im going to buy another 20,000 shares. this is ridiculous

They're taking out a $2.5 billion revolver because of cash concerns, they're considering selling off real estate, and there's a possibility of a future quarter loss.

You want to buy more?

buy some oil too while you're at it.

they probably own £15b of real estate and there is no way they will make a loss in any timeframe. "price war" actually means price fixing oligopoly

From this week. He wouldn't be calling it a mistake if was going to to rebound quickly.

Warren Buffett said he was wrong when it came to investing in Tesco.

"With Tesco, we definitely made a mistake. I made a mistake on that one more than anybody else made a mistake ... That was a huge mistake by me," the billionaire told "Squawk Box" on Thursday.

The U.K. supermarket retailer has seen its shares fall more than 48 percent year to date. Buffett's investment firm Berkshire Hathaway is now nursing losses of more than $700 million. According to Berkshire's annual letter to shareholders, Buffett has 301,046,076 Tesco shares.

hes not going to say he got it right is he for **** sake

Yeah I always liked Sainsbury's the most. It probably was more to do with liking the big store formats that the Sainsbury's I visited were in compared to the mostly corner store like Tescos that were around the areas I used to live in London. I also had concerns as to the freshness of the food, in particular bakery and frozen food at Tescos compared to Sainsburys.

He isn't going to admit it was a huge mistake if he thought the drop was just a temporary blip. That is not how he does things. If he thought there was tremendous value he would be buying more. He is not the type to bash something so he can get a good price. He wouldn't say he made a terrible mistake if he was buying.

But you know more than him, so go ahead and load up on something that you have absolutely no understanding about.

good call, buddy!

it is pretty amazing how rwillia seems to be spectacularly wrong on just about any possible investing topic.

Buffett is one of the few we would expect not to say it was a mistake just because the price went down a lot.

Its more likely he means there was information available that he missed or misunderstood.

so he held all the way down the drop like many other pro traders i know and only at the bottom realised he missed something?

so im in the same position as buffett and i have no idea? right ok

donkeykong youre a broke german student or something thinking youre a hero paper trade selling safe haven currencies and paper trade buying junk bonds mid crisis. its a near certainty you will make money paper trading like this not stating a time scale or needing leverage to make any worthwhile money. i'd bet i made more than your net worth in the long nikkei trade from 2013 because my timing was spot on and i actually trade for real

well you might have more money than me but you surely would be a lot better off if you had invested like i had or even not invested actively at all. you are prone to run into every herd trap possible because you are not an independent thinker. instead of analysing your mistakes you try to make a completely groundless personal attack. every info you have given on this forum that i m aware of has been garbage. you also have a horrible attitude hating people for having different opinions.
you should be thankful i have wasted so much of my precious time with a hopeless case like you are. the safe haven currency is the $ by the way, so making those currency trade has reduced my portfolio risk.

well, HSBC just upgraded Tesco to neutral today.

actually i picked up on your ridiculous arrogant tone and criticised it heavily like many others. as you have never traded for real its obvious you have no idea about leverage and timing.

- you suggest buying italian 10 years at 6% before they go to 7.6%
(i made a low risk trade buying italians/selling spanish 10s)

- you suggest selling gold at any price
(i work the range and trade around non farms and fed minutes)

- you suggest buying nikkei mid range
(i buy just above the 50% retracement at near the perfect price)

- you suggest selling safe haven currencies like reals and yen mid range
(i just bought the yen every time the BOJ intervened until the market gave up)
(i sold pretty much the absolute high of the swiss franc when the SNB announce measures)

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Day Trading, sports-betting, buy-to-letting , derivatives trading, what a lad

so buffett gets out? tesco must be finished