The Kroger Co. Analyst Day - Final.(Broadcast transcript)

CARIN FIKE, DIRECTOR, IR, KROGER CO: Good afternoon, everyone, I assume you can hear me. We've got the webcast on? Great. Thank you for joining us for Kroger's 2008 Investor Conference. That's right Don. We're starting. I think most of you already know me, I'm Carin Fike, Kroger's Director of Investor Relations. But for those of you that I'm meeting for the first time, you may only know me through our audio webcasts. So, yes it's true, I really am this tiny. As they say in the business, I think the audio webcast adds about 10 pounds. I didn't know if that joke was going to work.

This afternoon and this evening, and really into tomorrow morning, you're going to hear a lot about what Kroger is doing to improve our connection with customers. Well, we're also trying to improve our connection with investors as well.

Earlier this year we asked several of you to participate in a survey about our investor relations program and there were a few pretty clear themes that came out of your feedback, one of which was your desire for greater transparency about our business and our quarterly financial results.

With that objective in mind, we began strengthening and amplifying the disclosures in our quarterly earnings releases, our conference call scripts and our SEC filings. And that's also really what caused us to hold today's event.

So, we hope that you gain a greater understanding of our business and our strategy through your participation in our investor conference today, not only through the presentations that you're going to hear this afternoon and this evening, but also through the interactions that you have with my Kroger colleagues who are participating in this event today and tomorrow. So, thank you for your feedback, keep it coming, we do appreciate it, we do listen, and we try to respond.

We have a full program on tap for this afternoon so let's get started. But first I need to satisfy my attorney friends in the audience and get the Safe Harbor language out of the way. As you can all read the PowerPoint slide, I want to remind everyone that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements.

I must caution you that such statements are predictions and actual evens or results can differ materially. A detailed discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material affect on our business on an ongoing basis is contained in our SEC filings. But Kroger assumes no obligation to update that information.