Whole Foods Financial Analysis Paper

Established in 1978, Whole Foods Market opened its first store in Austin, Texas in 1980. This natural supermarket was the first certified organic food supermarket in the U.S. Now, 456 stores stretch across the nation, Canada, and the U.K. (see appendix A with the various states and locations) with 35,000-50,000 SKU’s lining the shelves. Whole Foods sets high standards for not only it’s product freshness but also expectations of employees. High customer service, environmental stewardship, positive impact on local and global communities, and high return on invested capital has made Whole Foods Market an industry leader being 5th largest public produce and food retailer. Whole Foods Market dominates its competition, including grocers such as Kroger Co., Walmart Stores Inc., and Sprouts Farmers Markets by consistently providing superior product quality, competitive pricing, and careful risks without sacrificing a higher net margin of 2.85%. The recent

The Current Ratio is used to evaluate a company’s ability to satisfy its financial obligations. If the calculated result is less than 1.00, it implies a company cannot pay its obligations thereby risking the company’s financial health unless action is taken to correct the negative trend. In contrast, if the ratio result is greater than 1.00, it is usually interpreted positively and implying a greater likelihood of said company to handle assets and capital successfully. Calculating Whole Foods current ratio, a result of 1.47 (see Appendix B for calculations for all Current Ratios) implies the company is efficiently able to turn its SKU’s into cash within a favorable operating cycle. This is similar to Sprouts Farmers Market that resulted at 1.50 and Kroger with 7.63 giving these competitors a closer advantage (Sprouts Farmers Market,2016) than Walmart’s surprising ratio of .93 for 2016. (Walmart Inc.,