Ahold Is A Sleepy Retailer in Need of A Shakeup
I won’t go so far as to say that Ahold is a short, because I have not studied the composition of its institutional investor base. However, one thing I know for sure is that Ahold is a sleepy retailer with a very sleepy CEO, Frans Muller, who needs to be swapped out.
While Ahold touts its launching of climate hubs, the retailer does not offer two-factor authentication (2FA) for its customers (I unfortunately am one in the Northeast and much prefer the grocery brands of the Southwest and Mid-Atlantic).
A large, publicly-traded retailer that does not offer 2FA to protect online accounts? 2FA is table stakes. Lack of 2FA tells me that you do not take your online sales channel seriously. Thus, Ahold is 100% leaving revenue on the table as it relates to online sales. There is enormous opportunity cost here.
Too bad that activist investors do not spend as much time scouring Europe for candidates as they do in the U.S. Ahold is begging for an activist investor to shake up operations, particularly its online effort. The challenge is that when you are as bad as Ahold, when it starts at the top, it is a cultural problem. That means not only does the entire senior team have to go (yes, even the CFO), but many of the rank-and-file corporate employees have to be swapped out. A new online marketing effort will have to be built from the ground-up. An online sales channel will need to be built up including the supporting infrastructure.
Read Jonathan Bouman’s piece from December if you want to see how lax Ahold is when it comes to cybersecurity (HERE).