Good morning, and welcome to The Kroger Company 2020 Investor Update Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. If you are listening to the presentation on the phone and watching the webcast online, please mute the audio on your PC. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rebekah Manis, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Brandon. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our investor update. We'll start the meeting with prepared remarks and a presentation from Rodney McMullen and Gary Millerchip. After the formal presentation, we will have time for questions. For those in our analyst community, we ask that you also join the webcast to view the slides during our prepared remarks. Once we transition to Q&A, we ask that you pose your questions via phone as you would normally. We look forward to hosting a full investor day with you in spring of 2021. At that time, we will share our outlook and drivers of our long-term growth model. Before we begin, I want to remind you that today's discussions will include forward-looking statements. We want to caution you that such statements are predictions, and actual events or results can differ materially.
A detailed discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material effect on our business on an ongoing basis is contained in our SEC filings, but Kroger assumes no obligation to update that information. Prepared remarks and presentations from this conference call will be available on our website at ir.kroger.com. I will now turn the call over to Kroger's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rodney McMullen.
Thank you, Rebekah. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's business update. With me today is Chief Financial Officer, Gary Millerchip. As Rebekah mentioned, we've pushed our Investor Day to spring of 2021 in hopes that travel restrictions have eased by then and we can meet face-to-face. We still felt it was important to provide you with an update as we approach the one-year mark from our last Investor Day and near the end of our three-year Restock Kroger transformation. Through Restock Kroger, we have made significant strategic choices to evolve our business and financial model. Additionally, these key changes and investments have positioned us to more effectively respond to the pandemic and successfully operate as an essential business.
I could not be prouder of the way our associates have come together from stores to pharmacies, distribution facilities, and manufacturing plants during this unprecedented time to protect and support each other and our customers. We also share in the grief of so many whose loved ones have lost their lives and livelihoods as a result of this awful pandemic. Since our fall 2019 Investor Day, we have delivered on our total shareholder return commitments with improving trends in our supermarket business before the pandemic that have accelerated and continue today. Our total shareholder return is outperforming the market and our peer group. As we provide our update this morning, we'd first like to take a step to reflect on where we were a few years ago when we saw a rapidly shifting marketplace and evolving customer base.
Our customer obsession led us to make several big decisions three years ago that would help guide our transformation. We believed that customers would continue to accelerate movement to a seamless shopping platform that combined the best experiences of a physical store environment with convenient e-commerce solutions. During the pandemic, that acceleration has been defined even more. We shifted the way we allocated capital and invested more in digital to build a seamless experience that would deliver anything, anytime, and anywhere. We knew that our decision to invest in digital would be rewarded by our customers. Over time, digitally engaged households spend more with Kroger, and from a profitability perspective, we will reach a point of indifference regardless of which channel they choose to engage with us.
At the same time, we increased investments in our associates and talent development because our associates serve the most essential role in creating the customer experience. We also knew that customer investments and value would remain important. Consistent with the Kroger Way, we committed to take a disciplined approach to cost savings and process changes to balance all these investments. We also leveraged our unique assets to transform our growth model and derive value for both our customers and shareholders in the form of alternative profit streams like Media and Personal Finance. Lastly, we continued our longstanding commitment to ESG and living our purpose by showing our customers, associates, and other stakeholders what we are doing to take care of people, communities, and the planet.
The sum of all these parts translate directly into our ability to grow the business and to create shareholder value. Kroger's success has always been tied to our ability to see where the customer's going and proactively address those changes. We set off on a journey to transform our business model, and while this journey hasn't been perfect, we have made significant progress. Through Restock Kroger, we have transformed our business by focusing on our customer, our associates, our purpose, and our shareholders. We have improved the customer experience by widening and deepening our competitive moats. Kroger is the market leader, holding the number one or number two market share position in 90% of the major markets we operate. In 2020, we have gained market share.
We changed the way we allocate capital to support technology and digital to build a seamless infrastructure, expanding our seamless ecosystem to reach 98% of Kroger households through delivery and pickup, resulting in digital sales that are 4x higher compared to the end of 2017. When it comes to our alternative profit streams, we're even more excited about the advantage they present than we were before. Gary will provide more detail, we are extremely encouraged by the results of using our data and shopping platform to create new value for our customers and shareholders and see tremendous opportunity for growth. Partnerships with companies like Walgreens and Ocado are also helping us transform our business model and deepen our connection with customers. We will share more information about these partnerships during our spring Investor Day.
Through our approach to develop talent, we have worked to ensure that we have the right balance of both internal and external talent, teams, and structure in the right focus areas. We have been deliberate in our recruitment and development in areas like merchandising and digital, bringing in talent from the outside to bolster existing talent. Overall, about one-third of our senior officers, group vice presidents, and presidents have been hired from the outside. Kroger has been investing to raise the wages of our frontline associates for the last several years. We are increasing associate wage investments incrementally by approximately $800 million through the end of 2020. As a result of this continued investment, Kroger has increased its average wage rate to over $15 per hour. With our comprehensive best-in-class benefits, including healthcare, paid time off, and retirement plans, our average hourly rate is over $20.
Our focus on culture and talent led to a 15% reduction in turnover from 2017 to 2019, and our retention rates continue to trend better than the retail industry average. Live Our Purpose is both a critical driver of our transformation and an authentic expression of our company culture. As the largest grocery retailer in America, Kroger is committed to being a force for good in the communities we serve. Since launching our ambitious Zero Hunger | Zero Waste social impact plan in 2017, we achieved our goal to donate more than 1 billion meals to feed hungry families in our communities by 2020. We also continue to increase Kroger's diversion of waste from landfill, reaching 80% diversion last year on our path to achieve 90% diversion or zero waste.
This year, Kroger outlined several new long-term environmental commitments, and they can be found in our annual environmental, social, and governance report. Lastly, we were pleased to be recognized as fourth on the Wall Street Journal's list of the top 20 most diverse Fortune 500 companies. Just yesterday, we announced a series of 10 deliberate actions we are taking to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in our business and our communities. By executing against our strategy, we are creating shareholder value. We are achieving cost savings of over $1 billion each year, and we are investing savings back into the business with an emphasis on talent, price, digital, and the customer experience, and that creates sustainable total shareholder return. We have returned approximately $6.4 billion to shareholders via dividends and repurchase shares since the beginning of fiscal 2017, and we continue to generate strong free cash flow.
During last year's investor day, we shared this slide and laid out our plan to grow the business and deliver strong and attractive total shareholder returns. We expect total shareholder returns of between 8% and 11%. We are confident we can deliver on this attractive TSR because of our strong free cash flow and sustainable net earnings growth. We remain as committed now as we were last fall when we introduced this to you. We believe there are significant incremental opportunities through partnerships that make the future even more exciting, and Gary will provide more detail in his section later. Our competitive moats, Fresh, Our Brands, Data and Personalization, and Seamless are strengths today. We are growing market share in 2020 and expect to continue to gain share because we believe we can do even better.
Customers make decisions about where to shop based on their perception of a retailer's food freshness. Our fresh offering is both an important sales driver for Kroger and a competitive advantage because customers rank our fresh departments higher than our largest competitors. We continue to innovate and position ourselves to win with the customer in fresh. Our Brands also provide a unique reason to shop at Kroger. Customers tell us they love Our Brands and choose them over leading competitor brands. Simple Truth is the largest natural and organic brand in the U.S. A recent third-party industry study reconfirmed that Simple Truth is the most loved natural and organic private label brand. Compared to CPG brands operating in our industry, Kroger's Our Brands portfolio would be in the top 10 for U.S. sales.
We continue to innovate and look for new products and strive to be at the forefront of product innovation using our unique data and customer insights. The quality of Kroger's data is a massive advantage because it allows us to personalize every touch point in our ecosystem, making the customer experience even better, improving our operations, and developing a significant alternative profit business that generates a profit from the traffic that personalization helps generate. Many retailers have transactional data, but no one has the customer data and the insights that Kroger has. Personalized communications is an important lever that drives strong incremental trips and units. We utilize best-in-class personalization science to send the right offers to customers based on their shopping habits and household needs. Customers have a significantly higher level of engagement in our offers and rate Kroger as the best at inspiring them with personalized recommendations.
We have a continued opportunity to accelerate growth in Seamless, and we have a clear path to improved digital profitability. We are reducing our cost to serve through technology and productivity improvements. Ocado will help accelerate those efficiencies. We are leveraging our personalization tools to improve sales mix and accelerating growth in media revenue generated from digital sales. Customer behavior is evolving through the pandemic, and we believe several of these shifts are structural and will last well beyond the pandemic. Customers are rediscovering their passion for cooking at home, learning to cook, and have an aspiration to eat more healthy foods. As families prepare more meals at home, Kroger's reputation as the leading choice for fresh product, plus the quality, value, and selection of Our Brands, becomes an even more important driver of customer choice.
As customers continue to rediscover their passion for making food and gathering around the dinner table and pass on dining in restaurants, Kroger will be there to provide food inspiration. Before I hand it off to Gary, I'd like to summarize the key takeaways to remember from this morning. Our associates remain relentlessly focused on our customers, who are at the center of everything we do. By reinventing the customer and financial model, Kroger is positioned to deliver beyond 2020 for our customers, associates, and shareholders. The investments we are making to strengthen our competitive moats bridge strongly to the trends we are seeing in customer behavior. We will build upon this momentum and make current strengths more compelling because we are not satisfied. We will leverage this momentum to continue to deliver consistently strong and attractive TSR.
Now I will turn it over to Gary to provide additional commentary on how we've built our business model for the future in creating shareholder value. Gary?
Thanks, Rodney, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start by echoing Rodney's sentiment that during these difficult times, I could not be more proud of the way our associates have come together to protect and support each other and our customers. This morning, I plan to focus on three topics. First, I'd like to remind you of the key components of our value creation model that we shared at our Investor Day in 2019. Second, I'll update you on the progress we are making in executing on this model. Finally, I will share why we are confident in our ability to continue to generate strong free cash flow and deliver on our TSR target in the future. At our Investor Day last year, we laid out our plan to grow the business and deliver strong and attractive total shareholder returns.
Our financial model is built upon a strong and durable core driven by our retail supermarket, fuel, and health and wellness businesses. It begins with the customer and our relentless focus on increasing customer loyalty. Our intensified focus on execution and continued improvements in the value and experience we deliver for our customers drive increased identical sales without fuel across our seamless ecosystem. To drive sustainable sales growth, we continue to invest in areas of the business that are important to our customers. This includes ongoing investments in talent, price, digital, and store experience, with an even greater emphasis on our competitive moat that Rodney discussed earlier. Importantly, we are also committed to being disciplined in balancing these investments with execution of cost-saving initiatives that simplify work for our associates and remove activities that do not add value for our customers.
The final part of our model is to leverage Kroger's unique assets to drive accelerated growth in our asset-light, margin-rich alternative profit streams. This includes Kroger Personal Finance, Media, Customer Data Insights, and Ventures. By executing on this framework, we are targeting total shareholder return of between 8% and 11%. This will be driven by 3%-5% growth in earnings and by returning cash to shareholders through a combination of share repurchase and dividends. This range excludes any potential change in our P/E multiple and the opportunity for additional growth through our strategic partnerships. A result of our robust execution against our plans, we are making strong progress and delivering upon our commitments across all stakeholder groups. During our second quarter earnings call, we updated our full year 2020 guidance, and today we are reconfirming that guidance.
Taking a step back from COVID-19 and looking over a slightly longer time horizon, we delivered solid growth in 2019 with improving identical sales, $1 billion of cost savings, and more than $100 million of incremental operating profit from alternative businesses. This resulted in net earnings growth in line with our TSR model. Prior to the pandemic, our early results in 2020 were also strong. While the pandemic has clearly been a tailwind to our business, we've been very pleased with the underlying progress across all key elements of our model this year, including sales and market share growth, cost-saving initiatives, and growth in alternative profit streams. I'd now like to spend a few minutes going deeper into three key elements of our model, which should help illustrate why we are well-positioned to achieve our TSR expectations.
First, I'll talk about cost savings and how our success in this area is underpinning our ability to continue to invest in the business and drive future growth. As you know, we generated over $1 billion of cost savings in each of the last two years, and we are on track to deliver an incremental $1 billion of savings this year. We believe improving operating efficiency has now developed into a core competence through our Restock Kroger transformation and would expect to continue to achieve significant savings into the future. Our cost-saving efforts include productivity improvements through process improvement and automation, sourcing of goods for sale and goods not for resale, administrative efficiencies, and waste reduction. As we look towards 2021, we have clear line of sight to many additional cost-saving opportunities through continued improvements in processes and the application of technology, automation, and machine learning.
An example of innovation in this area of our business is the group purchasing organization with Walgreens. We would expect this partnership to drive significant benefit from purchasing efficiencies next year. Another example of our innovative approach to improving efficiency is the recent opening of a pickup-only location in our Cincinnati market in response to COVID-19. This facility has proven to be a great test and learn center, allowing us to identify significant efficiencies that can be applied to our pickup operation across all stores. By applying learnings from this facility, we have achieved meaningful reductions in the cost to fulfill a digital order, and we are in the process of implementing additional improvements and technology enhancements that will further reduce costs and improve digital profitability. Over the last three years, we have built a platform that allows almost all of our customers to access to digital and e-commerce solutions.
Customers who engage with us digitally are more loyal, visit more frequently, and their basket size is significantly greater. I'd like to walk you through how we think about digital profitability, as this is a question we often receive. We previously talked about the pass-through rate on incremental sales through our stores as being north of 15%. For digital, the pass-through rate is also positive, though significantly lower, predominantly due to the incremental labor associated with picking an order. We were pleased with the progress we made to improve digital profitability in the second quarter and have a clear roadmap to achieve further improvement.
Our comprehensive plan includes continuing to drive efficiency and fulfilling a digital order via process improvements and automation, leveraging our personalization tools to improve sales mix and grow customer basket size through opportunities such as our recently launched marketplace, and accelerating growth in media revenue generated from digital sales. We expect to make meaningful progress on these metrics over the next 12 months. We're excited about the opportunity to realize further improvements in the future as we build out a flexible network of fulfillment centers, including our innovative partnership with Ocado. We look forward to sharing more about our digital strategy and Ocado plans at our spring Investor Day. We are equally as encouraged about our progress with alternative profit businesses. As we approach the end of our three-year Restock Kroger transformation, we are confident that alternative profit streams will be a major accelerator of our long-term growth model.
In 2019, we delivered in excess of $100 million of incremental operating profit, and we are on track to deliver another $100 million of incremental operating profit growth in 2020. This year, we have been most excited about progress in our media business. COVID-19 has accelerated digital customer engagement with food by a number of years, and this has translated into a tailwind for our media revenue. In the second quarter of 2020, Kroger Precision Marketing achieved a significant acceleration in business, and we now expect revenue growth will be greater than 100% this year. Kroger Precision Marketing is designed to make digital advertising more effective for CPG brands by using the power of our data and personalization science. Our market leading loyalty program provides Kroger the opportunity to connect customers directly to brands through advertising that inspires purchases online and in store.
Our ability to close the loop and match media exposure to an actual purchase allows us to help our partners improve their return on ad spend. As a reminder, our media business is now providing over 1,000 CPG partners with new tools and better ways to invest marketing dollars that are currently being spent with advertising platforms and digital media companies. This is in addition to continuing to invest trade dollars with Kroger in joint promotional plans to drive sales. As a further demonstration of the effectiveness of our media platform, a recent Kantar report on the state of e-commerce placed Kroger number one for ability to measure ROI out of 16 popular digital media platforms. Turning now to our financial model. Our cash flow remains strong and has proven to be resilient throughout the economic cycle.
Over the course of 2017 to 2020, we expect to generate at least $7.6 billion of free cash flow, excluding the sale of strategic assets and company sponsored pension contributions. Our free cash flow yield in 2020 is expected to be greater than 9%. Our financial strategy and prioritization of free cash flow remains the same, and we are being disciplined in our approach to financial management. We are committed to investing in the business to drive profitable growth, maintaining our current investment-grade debt rating, and returning excess free cash to investors via share repurchases and a growing dividend over time. Since 2017, we have returned approximately $6.4 billion to shareholders via dividends and repurchase shares. In June, we increased the dividend by 13%, marking the 14th consecutive year of dividend increases and double-digit compounded annual growth since reinstatement in 2006.
On September 11, 2020, the board of directors authorized a new $1 billion share repurchase program, replacing the prior authorization. Looking forward, we remain confident in our business model. Based on the strength of our execution against our competitive moats, our food expertise, unparalleled data insights, and expected structural shifts to food consumption at home as a result of COVID-19, we believe Kroger is well-positioned to continue to differentiate and grow our core business in the future. This, combined with strong momentum in cost savings and alternative profit streams, mean that one year on from announcing our TSR target, we are well positioned to deliver on this commitment.
Looking towards next year specifically, we believe that our performance in 2021 will be stronger than we would have expected prior to the pandemic, when viewed as a two-year stacked result for identical sales growth and as a compounded growth rate over 2020 and 2021 for adjusted earnings per share growth. We also expect to generate excess free cash flow over the next two years. As the future impact of COVID-19 becomes clear, we will, through the lens of our capital allocation framework, determine the best use of this cash to support our long-term growth and TSR model. We look forward to providing more color on our 2021 plans and future use of cash during our 2021 Investor Day. Since launching our TSR model, we are delivering improved operating results.
Our underlying business model is strong and our strategy positions us well to continue to deliver consistently in the future as we move beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. That concludes our formal presentation, and we'll now open the line up for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. Also, please make sure that your PC is muted if you are on the webcast. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from John Heinbockel with Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Good morning, John.
Good morning, John.
Hey, let me start with, when you think about two things as we start to move past COVID, general magnitude of business that you can retain that you've picked up, right? Some of that's macro and some of it is what you're doing. Secondly, what can you do, what will you do, in a disciplined way to maintain as much of that business as possible? Those two thoughts.
Thanks, John, for the question. I'll start, and Gary, add anything. If you look at retaining the business, I would put it in two buckets. One, in some of the comments I made in the prepared remarks, time and time again, we're having customers tell us they are learning how to cook. They didn't know how. They're learning. The second thing that's more inspiring for us is they're telling us they enjoy it. They really enjoy it when they do it as a family. What we're doing is trying to build upon that in physical sending to them. Obviously, the experience they get in store or pickup or delivery are things that is the glue. If somebody's doing it in store, obviously our associates are critical to that, or pickup and delivery.
If you look at the progress that we've made during COVID-19 on continued on fresh and those aspects, plus the in-stock and other key parts are all the things where, if you look at the sum of all pieces. Obviously, we want people to fall in love with our fresh product, our associates, Our Brands, and all of those things they're telling us that we're doing a good job on. Those are the things where I look at it as we're getting our opportunity for our associates to show how good they are and our products, how fresh it is. By showing and delivering against that shows. Then obviously, we've continued to provide value throughout the pandemic. Some of our competitors stopped doing ads at different times.
Some of our competitors have been not as aggressive on promotion or raising prices, and we want to make sure that our customers see that we treat them the same as always and not taking advantage of them during the pandemic. We really believe those things together in terms of people learning how to cook and then us and our associates taking care of them and personalizing that offer and creating a great seamless experience. All of those things together is how we'll retain that business. I know, Gary, any point you'd want to raise, add to?
I think you covered the key points, Rodney. I think it does tie back to the competitive moats that we talked about in the prepared remarks. As customers are experiencing the fresh quality and experiencing the digital ecosystem that makes it easier to shop, then we believe the reason we call them moats is we believe they are creating a stickiness with customers that customers tell us they enjoy and appreciate. I think continuing to invest in value and demonstrating that while today customers, or over the pandemic, I maybe should say, as customers have been less focused on price directly, we think long term, that's something that customers feel is very important.
We believe as we navigate through the current environment, that customers look at those periods of time, how you operated as a brand and how you deliver value, and we believe that will continue to be important and will allow us to retain that business in the future as well.
Yeah. Just secondly, you talked about, I think, getting the incremental profitability right of digital up to stores. Can you close that gap completely? Is that a three or four year process? How much does digital penetration have to go up to get there?
Obviously, we have a clear path to continue to improve our digital profitability that Gary mentioned through process change, increasing using technology. If you look at our Ocado relationship, also the learnings from the dedicated fulfillment store in Cincinnati and micro-fulfillment centers and the continued improvement of media, especially in alternative profit. We haven't set a timeframe publicly. We will share more detail. We can clearly see a path to improved incremental profitability from digital. Over time, we aspire and would expect to where we're indifferent between that customer shopping in store or online. As you know, what we find is customers generally that shop online still come into the store, but they come into the store when they want to, not because they have to, but they like going into the store. They like the experience of our associates.
They like the inspiration of touching and seeing the food in addition to the pickup. It's really both of those things together.
More of a practical point, John, too, just to build on Rodney's comments, which I completely agree with. It's going to be interesting with digital as you think about growth in the future as well, because at some point, we expect digital is going to continue to grow and become a bigger part of the business. As you start to create value in those levers that Rodney mentioned, they can essentially become a tailwind on the base business as well. Right? If you think about if you're able to take a dollar add up, even though you may not be at parity, you can start to generate some tailwinds in the model because of the growth you've invested in the early phase of digital as you look towards 2021 and 2022.
Yeah. The other thing that we're just getting started on is selling those customers other products that in the past we haven't offered. Obviously in the marketplace, that's the start of that journey.
Thank you.
Thanks, John.
Our next question comes from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks, everyone. Good morning.
Good morning.
Actually, a follow-up to John's actually first question. Do you know what percentage, or can you share what percentage of your comp growth is coming from new customers if you look over the last few quarters, inclusive of the pandemic, and how does it compare to the percentage pre-pandemic?
We haven't talked about those numbers specifically. We continue to be pleased, I would say on both fronts, Simeon, as we think about what we're seeing with the customer today. We're seeing continued growth in loyalty of our most loyal customers as they've obviously grown their basket size and increased their spend across the store. We're seeing strong ID sales growth across all categories in the store, which I think demonstrates how our existing customers are kind of consolidating trips into their retailers of choice, and we're seeing deepening loyalty across those customers. I would say it's really been over the last few months that as we obviously spent a significant amount of investment over three years at Restock Kroger to build out our digital capability.
We've seen many customers come into Kroger, both in the store because of the desire to go to one place and fill the full basket need, but also taking advantage of those digital opportunities. As we brought customers in with the fee-free promotion on pickup, we've really sought to use those personalization tools that Rodney talked about earlier to really make sure that we're deepening that relationship and ensuring those customers remain sticky.
If you look at our market share growth, we're having the strongest market share growth that we've had in 10 years. When you look at the makeup of that market share growth, as Gary mentioned, a good part of it is because the customers are spending more with us, either existing customers through bigger basket size and that this bigger basket size is driven by pickup and in store. A meaningful chunk of that is also driven by the new customers coming to our stores and engaging with us digitally as well. It's a meaningful percent. We would look at the market share growth, and see that we're actually being successful on both fronts.
Okay, my follow-up, also revisiting this, Gary mentioned this 15%, the store incremental margin. I don't know if you could do the math linearly, but if you take what Rodney had said to us in the past, that it could take three to four years to become indifferent with that omni-channel shopper, would that mean that the incremental margin for digital is somewhere in the very low single digits today? You mentioned getting there, you'll improve the economics of the digital purchase, plus some of the advertising spend. Can you maybe parse out how much better can the incremental margin get on the purchase, and then how much of that gap you're going to try to make up vis-a-vis some of the advertising spend?
Yeah, thanks for the question. I would say, think about the digital path as we have that ability to really curate the offer for the customer. We can use a lot more of those personalization tools and the data that we have in our loyalty program to be able to fine-tune and improve the experience. We see significant runway to continue to broaden the basket size through that personalization, and also through the launch of the marketplace solution that we announced earlier this year, which obviously comes at a more effective, higher pass-through rate in the sense that we're not carrying many of those products and they deliver straight to the consumer. They're all adding and supporting both the growth in sales, but also the sales mix improvement. Alongside that, we do believe that media's going to continue to grow.
It's one of those areas where when we think about the investment that we're making in digital to support the store model, it's almost the opposite side of that coin where the COVID-19 is proving to be a tremendous accelerator of digital growth, and therefore it's allowing us to springboard the future growth of that digital media business, and we think that has significant opportunity to continue to grow. As we mentioned, the cost savings, we're continuing to find short-term savings. We invest in technology and invest in process improvement continuously and are seeing the benefits of that flow through. As we get beyond the short-term plan, Ocado and some of those new innovative fulfillment centers become really important in sort of continuing to accelerate that momentum as we look more two, three years out in that overall plan.
I think we would see opportunity in all three areas. I wouldn't really put a percentage on breaking it down between them. We actually think there's opportunity in all three of those, and it'll be a combination of.
We get significantly higher share within each household. When you start looking at the profitability in dollars of that household, it improves faster than our margins improve as well for that digital customer.
Thank you both. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
In the third quarter, what you're currently running at? Gary, you mentioned sort of like a two-year stack next year being stronger than what you would have anticipated pre-COVID. Any initial color on what we should be thinking there?
If you look at third quarter identicals, they would be slightly double digit, which is consistent with what we expected and we outlined when we talked about it at the second quarter earnings release, and we would remain confident with the guidance we gave for the year. On identicals as well. It's tracking where we expect it to be. We are seeing different parts of the country different. If you look in the West, where you still have more lockdowns, our identical sales would be stronger there than in the Midwest, where things have reopened more than what they have. There is some regional differences based on region and where they are on COVID as well.
Yeah. I know you mentioned earlier, Rodney, but I would add, Ed, that we continue to see market share growth in both of those. It's just there's obviously a different dynamic going on in the different regions right now based on the different restrictions that exist. In terms of the second part of your question, Ed, I think really we'll be looking to use our spring Investor Day to provide obviously a lot more color around the way we think about next year, the model to work. When we make that comment, we'd be expecting the two-year stack to be north of the sort of traditional view of the model that we've shared previously.
We do believe, as Rodney mentioned earlier, not only will the pandemic likely to continue to have some impact leading into the first part of next year, but we actually believe there will be some structural changes that will continue around customers eating more food at home, whether that be because of more of a rebalance between working from home and working from an office or also just because customers have found more passion for eating food at home and spending time with family. Of course, the economic impact still ready to play out and what does the new world look like in a post-COVID environment for restaurants as well. We'd expect all those things really to lead to a view. We've done a lot of work on that.
We have some initial views around it, but I think we feel more comfortable sharing that color in the spring as we kind of get more data points on how the winter plays out with COVID.
Yeah, just to give you a little bit of additional insight, one of the things that Gary and his team are doing is really modeling multiple scenarios in terms of does the continuation of COVID look like it does today? Is a vaccine created? When is a vaccine created? What we're trying to do is to make sure that we're agile in terms of what is happening. We think that's incredibly important, and we continue to focus on improving in-stocks in the supply chain because that will be as equally as important.
Gary mentioned it before, but we do expect 2021 to have been better than 2021 would've been without COVID, and that is a good floor spot and would tie back to the 8%-11% TSR and the earnings growth of 3%-5% and the cash flow that Gary outlined and I outlined both at Investor Day and updated today.
Great. Just a follow-up, as it relates to the gross margin, just kind of curious as to how we should be thinking about things here. If the COVID top-line benefit, how you're thinking about that line item.
Yeah. Thanks, Ed, for the question. I think I would really kind of bring it back to our and how we think it will make sure we can protect that business that we've gained and be able to deliver value for them consistently in the future. Alongside that, we feel very confident in our overall model because, as I mentioned in some of the prepared remarks, we continue to drive significant cost savings, and some of that would be in cost of goods, some of it would be in the OG&A lines. Overall, we feel good about our ability to drive cost savings to support the investments that we believe we need to make to continue to grow and win long term. Of course, over time, our alternative profit streams will continue to accelerate.
We wouldn't expect to be going backwards from the growth that we're seeing in that model. Again, we'll share more at the Investor Day in the spring, but that obviously becomes a tailwind to gross margin over time as well. We feel very comfortable with our ability to manage the environment. We would expect to continue to deliver value for customers, both in price, but in promotions, personalization, different investments in experience. We feel good about our ability to balance those investments in the model.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Ed.
Our next question comes from Michael Lasser with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Does the assumption of a mid-single-digit contribution margin on the digital sales include the expectation that you're going to be able to retain the $5 delivery fee or does that exclude the $5 delivery fee? Do you have plans to reinstate that $5 fee?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. I think there's two different points there. On the first point, the data that we shared directionally earlier and the sort of the illustrative chart that we showed in the presentation would be based on our current performance from digital. It would exclude the fee. It's really talking about where we are today based on how we're delivering value for the customer and what we see in terms of behavior and customer metrics. What we've really seen over the last six months, I would say, is the acceleration in digital media growth and the improvements we've been able to make in the cost to fill an order have really offset the impact of the fee being temporarily removed. As regards how we think about that long term, I know we've talked a little bit about this before.
We will continue to evaluate that, and really, we always look at it through the lens of the customer and where does the customer give us most credit for the value we're providing. Historically, pre-COVID, the $5 fee, when we tested removing that fee, hadn't proven to be a key driver of the way customers thought about where value was being given to them as they shopped across Kroger. When we went through the pandemic, it became clear that was an important measure, and so we'll continue to look at customer insights and decide whether it makes sense to continue to give value in that way or whether we pivot. It'll always be driven by our customer insights and what our customers tell us they value the most.
Gary mentioned that part of the continued expectation of improving margins is our teams are doing a great job on process change and identifying new ways of reducing the cost to pick an order. When Ocado gets at scale, that would be a significant step reduction versus the current cost as well. It's really all of the pieces working together. The team is also making good progress on selling customers incremental items that wasn't in the core before, between expansion of the store, availability of product, and the marketplace, and that has improved mix as well.
Rodney, on that point, do you think you can make enough progress next year, either with the process improvements because of the Ocado relationship or further penetration of alternative profit streams to offset the potential that your in-store business is down, and we're going to probably think about a 15% decremental margin on that, and yet your digital business will continue to grow, and we'll think about a mid-single-digit margin on that. Next year, it could be a difficult profitability year if you don't make considerable progress on those aforementioned initiatives.
Yeah. It's a great question. When we have our Investor Day in March, we'll get into a lot more detail on that and the mix of expectation. I don't think, at this point, I would go in additional detail versus what Gary and I have already shared, in terms of the mix of the various pieces.
Yeah. The only thing I would add, Rodney, is I think there's a lot of moving parts in next year's model. There's going to be a lot, obviously, of one-time costs and investments that we made this year that wouldn't be recurring again next year in that model. You mentioned alt profit growing. As I mentioned in my prepared comments, we would expect to see significant continuation of cost savings. It's not a done sort of journey, if you like, when you think about where we've gone with cost and Restock Kroger. It's very much continuing that momentum. I think you're right. There's certainly going to be some headwinds around cycling the sales and the impact of the business there.
I would just emphasize, I think there's a lot of puts and takes, and I think there's not one driver that's going to sort of result in the outcome. That's why we think it's important to take everybody through that full detail when we reach the spring. We do believe that when you look at the two-year journey, we're going to be pleased with where that will position us versus what we'd originally expected and relative to our commitments.
Go ahead.
Hi. Thanks very much. A couple questions just on the digital flow through. I just want to clarify, you are talking about EBITDA margins, correct? I asked in the context of the fact that when you start opening the Ocado facilities, D&A will kick in.
Take all of the costs that we incur incrementally for fulfilling a digital order, then we offset, or I should say, we ignore in the model what we believe is not incremental value from that transaction. Where we believe there are sales that we're getting from digital that would have been coming into the store anyway, we take that out, and we don't give ourselves benefit for that. While you could argue it's certainly retaining that customer, and we might lose them if we didn't do it, we're not showing that in through our calculation. We're just showing the incrementality that we're driving from extra sales and the value that we're driving through things like media revenue. Yes, that's how we think about the model.
Then over time, certainly, we'll share more color, as you might expect, in spring next year, because around that time, we'll be real close to the first two facilities opening, and we'll give you a lot more insights into how to think about Ocado. You're right, there will be a ramp-up period that's fully contemplated for next year in our thinking around our model. Certainly, there'll be a ramp-up period in those first two facilities as you build volume, and there's going to be an element of fixed costs in that model that will obviously, over time, get covered by the scale of volume and the efficiencies that come through the automation. It's going to be a journey that the Ocado piece will take a few years before that really shows up in our numbers on that slide that I provided in my prepared remarks.
As we mentioned earlier, we still see a lot of short-term opportunities to continue to make progress in digital profitability, and then really Ocado comes behind and takes it.
Very strong and stronger than what you would see in store.
Okay, that's helpful. Just on the guidance, obviously, you reiterated the share repurchase of $600 million-$1 billion, but you were close to $3 billion on the balance sheet at 2Q, and obviously, you'll be higher than that when we get your third quarter results. Wondering how we should think about the buyback beyond this $1 billion that you've obviously authorized, because I'm assuming you'll run through that by the end of this calendar year and again, still will have probably a solid $2 billion of excess + $2 billion or more of excess cash on the balance sheet.
We agree with you, Karen. We do expect to have strong free cash flow through the rest of this year and overall over the two years of 2020 and 2021, we would expect to be generating cash beyond the level that was contemplated in our TSR model. At this point, some of those dollars, I should point out, I think we talked about it on the previous earnings call. Some of that would be tax dollars that are being delayed, and some of it will be working capital that would unwind. I think there's an inflated number from what would be the true number, we're working through all of those pieces, as you might expect.
Fundamentally, we would agree that we'd expect to have a higher level of cash than we'd originally expected due to the stronger performance and the impact of COVID. We're taking a very deliberate approach to that cash because there are still, while we feel very confident in what we're seeing in our model and how we're managing the business, when you think about where does the COVID environment end, how does it change the U.S. consumer? How does it change the economic environment? There's obviously questions around what the economy will look like going forward. There could be changes that impact the business with a government change in next year if that were to happen.
As we think about where we are and what's changing with the U.S. consumer and the U.S. market, we think it's prudent to remain some flexibility and to make sure that we maintain our options. The way we'll think about using that cash there will certainly be very much focused on the capital allocation framework that we've shared. We'll start with, do we believe there are capital investments that we should be making that will strengthen our moats, will allow us to deliver the growth and beyond the growth that we've committed to as part of our TSR framework? We're obviously committed to maintaining our investment-grade debt rating, but that's not an issue based on the strength of our free cash flow and our current position.
Once we get beyond that priority, we'll certainly be looking at what would be the ways in which we would deploy that excess free cash and return to shareholders. At this point, we'll want to use our March Investor Day to really provide more of that color, because we think it's important to make sure we're clear on both what's happening with the consumer in the marketplace and also that we can provide more color on the longer-term growth plans when we get to that spring Investor Day as well.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Karen.
Our next question comes from Robbie Ohmes with Bank of America Global Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I had a follow-up just on the 3Q ID trends. You guys are seeing the slight double digit. Am I right that you kind of have to maintain that level to get to the 13+ in the fourth quarter as well? Just with that thinking, how are you guys thinking about November and December this year, Thanksgiving and the holidays? Should these be better ID months in the COVID-19 environment than the other months? Just any kind of thoughts you have on that. Just one other question. Can we get an update just on the pharmacy profit outlook and COVID-19 impact on that? Thanks.
Sure. Thanks for the questions, Robbie. On the first part of the question, the guidance that we shared for the IDs for the year would sort of require a range in sort of as a minimum 8%-9% for the second half of the year. We'd be trending, to Rodney's point, where we would have expected to be at this point and feel really that the guidance that we gave actually was very 20%-30% we feel like was meant to be a realistic view of what we think the year will play out like based on the investments and the puts and takes and the continued accelerated growth that we're experiencing in the business.
I would say that right now we feel like everything is playing out in the way that we had envisaged, in general, and would be in line with the guidance, hence why we reconfirmed that in the communication this morning. As we think about pharmacy, I'd say it's a continuation of the themes that we've shared previously, and it was certainly going to be an interesting area of the business as you head towards 2021. We've seen continued growth in script counts and continued growth in market share in pharmacy. We continue to see some pressure on reimbursement rates that we're managing through continuing to take cost out of the business through efficiencies and continuing to recalibrate our product offerings to make sure that we're driving revenue in different places.
For 2021, I think it's going to be an interesting year because we would expect some sort of returning to normal in the customers starting to use medical facilities. Certainly as a COVID vaccine hopefully becomes available, Kroger would hope to play a meaningful role in supporting that and supporting our customers and the country rebounding with getting that vaccine out as quickly as possible.
I would add just a couple of comments on Gary's part about fourth quarter. As you look at the holidays, we do expect people to celebrate the holidays, but obviously it'll be smaller family gatherings. We have invested in some additional warehouse capacity and inventory products for things that are holiday-oriented. Our belief is that to support those celebrations. We don't see much change from a COVID standpoint. We still see people working from home a lot and taking vacations at home on staycations and things like that. We built our assumptions around what we've shared on guidance, but we are also managing the business around those things as well.
Got it. Thanks so much, guys.
Thanks, Robbie.
Our next question will come from Kelly Bania with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions.
Good morning.
Good morning. You may want to push this question to March, but I'm hoping we can just talk about Ocado a little bit in more detail and just a candid assessment of how you feel about the capabilities that you're building there. Because clearly, while the environment over the past several months has pulled forward digital and e-commerce engagement, a lot of consumers have also signed up for membership programs that are primarily same-day services, from Instacart to Walmart+ to Amazon to Shipt. So just would love a candid assessment about how you feel about the capabilities that you're setting up with Ocado longer term. Same day, next day, the percent of your markets that will be able to support that demand, and also how you envision your relationship with Instacart evolving as you ramp up Ocado. I think investors would love to hear some candid assessment of this topic.
Yeah, I'll do a little bit, but the more in-detail conversation will be in March. If you look at overall, as we've mentioned before, Ocado is part of an overall supply ecosystem between stores, micro-fulfillment centers, dedicated smaller locations, and Ocado. What we find is a meaningful percentage of customers submit their orders in advance so that next day is not a problem. Ocado will also have same-day capabilities for part of the trade area based on how close it is to the facility. We feel very good about the overall partnership with Ocado and the continued progress that they are making. Obviously, we're continuing to learn from some of the ramp-ups in other parts of the world, in Canada and France, plus the continued growth in the U.K. is incredibly efficient. What we find is there are certain assortments that the customer appreciates same day.
There's other assortment where next day is not a problem, and we will use the combination of all of our assets together and the capabilities together as well to deliver against that.
The only thing, Rodney, I would add with Kelly, specific to your question around Instacart, obviously they're an important partner of ours today. We work very closely with them, and they provide fulfillment services for delivery to home. One thing, I think we've clarified this before, but just to confirm, today, we have a slightly different relationship with Instacart, where we essentially, you can certainly use Instacart as a customer and go onto their website and shop at Kroger. We also have a service, and we think that's important because we really do see the value in owning the overall relationship and creating a seamless experience, all the personalization we can do and giving customers the full value.
The majority of our volume today would be on the latter solution of customers coming into the Kroger ecosystem and feeling part of being a member of Kroger, if you like. That's something that we'll continue to partner with Instacart on in making sure that we're deepening that relationship with the customer.
Okay. That's helpful. I guess, Rodney, when you mentioned micro-fulfillment, how many micro-fulfillment centers are you thinking about? Is that Ocado-based micro-fulfillment, and where are you? How does that fit in with your commitments that you made to Ocado in terms of the original 20 facilities? Just where are we with that commitment, and how does micro-fulfillment fit into that?
Micro-fulfillment will be a combination of automation and non-automation. We would expect Ocado to be an important partner in that. Obviously, one of the keys is getting the economics to work. A lot of the models that are out there today really don't have the right level of SKU offering, and they're incredibly expensive to operate. It's really we're all learning together. Obviously, a big Ocado shed is what's got the most experience in the marketplace and how it performs.
Our last question comes from Joseph Feldman with Telsey Advisory Group. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering, could you share some more thoughts on the dark store test in Cincinnati and kind of what you're seeing so far and how we might think about that going forward?
Yeah. We would look at it, internally, we don't even call it a dark store. Gary mentioned it before, but the most meaningful thing is it's provided a lot of learnings that we're able to scale back into all the Kroger stores. It's a great test and learn lab, and I can tell you they're changing stuff in that facility every week on identifying additional delivery points, additional pickup points, and supporting that via several different ways. It's been a great test and learn lab to help us reduce the cost of pickup in all stores, and that's probably been the best leverage point so far from it.
Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. The last one was on the alternative profit stream. It seems like this year you're getting an incremental $100 million. Last year was a little more than that. I get that as the business grows, it might be less as we go forward. How should we think about it going forward in terms of the growth, I don't know, $50 million-$75 million or where it might go in the next few years? Thanks.
Yeah. I won't give the specifics, if Gary wants to give the specifics, he can after I finish. We see alternative profit being a huge opportunity for the foreseeable future, the next several years. If you look at this year, obviously COVID has affected part of the alternative profit streams, especially with Kroger Personal Finance and gift cards sales. If you look, in media, we've continued to have tremendous growth there. Kroger Personal Finance growth wouldn't have been as much as expected, but we believe it'll still grow. We still see solid growth this year that's meaningful. We would expect to see continued opportunities going forward. When you look at media, we believe we're just getting started in terms of the opportunity there and our ability to provide CPG partners great insight in terms of what people do.
The recognition that Kantar gave in terms of the number one ROI from a media channel versus 15 other companies, 16 total. Those are things that we'll continue to leverage. We still see a meaningful opportunity, and we're continually looking for additional opportunities to create the next alternative profit stream, because we have over 11 million people a day coming into our stores and 3.5 million and growing on our website. All of those things, we should be able to personalize and continue to grow.
Yeah. I think you said it well, Rodney. I wouldn't have a lot to add. I certainly would agree that it's one of those areas where we'll provide more color in the spring, of course, but we wouldn't see it as something that's going backwards in the short term. It's moving forwards. When we think about the areas that Rodney mentioned, we've talked before COVID that KPF has the ability, we believe, to potentially double in size just based on using our personalization tools, better execution more consistently across the company to create the same level of engagement we have in our best markets on those products. This year wasn't the year to achieve that with COVID, as Rodney mentioned. I wouldn't say that our belief that the opportunity there is less than it was when we started the journey.
Media's been the opposite direction, where it's demonstrated the ability for us to pull that forward, which we're really excited about and see media as a huge market where we're still really tapping into a small part of that. We believe we have unique assets that give us the right to be able to create a much bigger space to play in there. As Rodney mentioned, there is constant innovation going on in that alternative business team on new opportunities and looking in. We've talked about before, healthcare, and are there ways to tap into our data and identify future growth. Some of those areas become investments in the early years, but then they play out into growth in the outer years. It's very much a journey in our mind that we expect to continue.
That's great. Thank you so much, and good luck, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thanks everyone again for joining us today. Under Restock Kroger, we have made significant investments to transform our business. These investments, combined with the structural shifts related to customers eating more meals at home, give us more confidence that Kroger's performance in both 2020 and 2021 will be even stronger than previously anticipated. We are incredibly excited about the future. During our spring Investor Day, which we've talked about several times, we will share how we will continue to grow market share by accelerating our competitive moats. We'll provide more color on our digital strategy and our path to strong profitability. The profit streams and data will accelerate growth even more in the future. We look forward to hopefully seeing you in person in the spring, and thank you again for your time and your interest in Kroger, and we look forward to spending time together soon.
Thank you.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.