Grocery giant Kroger ($KR) filed its full-year 2025 earnings release this morning, with a rather unpleasant $2.5 billion impairment charge for a warehouse automation project that never delivered on its expected promises.

The impairment charge wasn’t a surprise. Kroger had previously disclosed the matter in a filing on Nov. 18, framing the matter as an “updated e-commerce plan” where Kroger would close three fulfillment warehouses around the United States. The impairment translates to a one-time hit to EPS of $2.91 per diluted share.

Wait a minute, warehouse automation costs… Why does that ring a bell? 

Because Walmart ($WMT) reported its own EPS issues with warehouse automation several weeks ago — but did so in a very different way. Together, the two earnings releases present a fascinating comparison of how large businesses might treat projects and how they disclose issues to investors when said project goes wobbly.

First, Kroger. The company originally struck a partnership in 2018 with British warehouse automation business Ocado to build as many as 20 automated fulfillment centers across the United States. Ultimately only eight such centers ever went live, including the three that Kroger now plans to close per its filing last quarter. Krogers ended up paying Ocado $350 million to get out of the partnership, and taking the $2.5 billion impairment for robotic automation dreams that never came to pass.

By taking an impairment, Kroger ends up reporting that $2.5 billion charge on the statement of cash flows, under the cash from operations disclosures. See Figure 1, below.

On the other hand is Walmart. It has an equity investment in Symbotic ($SYM), a warehouse automation company in suburban Boston. That partnership traces back to 2017, although more recently Walmart sold its own in-house robotics efforts to Symbotic in 2025 and pledged another $520 million to Symbotic in long-term investment.

We’re not robotics specialists here, so we don’t know how good Symbotic’s technology might or might not be; but the company has run at a loss for years. Walmart, as an investor, shoulders some of that loss — but reports it on the income statement rather than the statement of cash flows, in the Other (Gains) Losses line item.

Sure enough, Walmart reported “other losses” of $2.12 billion in Q4. Tucked away at the bottom of Page 33 on its earnings release was a note that “net losses were primarily driven by a decrease in the underlying stock price of our investment in Symbotic.” Those losses resulted in a $0.21 hit to EPS. (Walmart reported $0.53 EPS for the quarter, and adjusted EPS of $0.74.)

So we have Kroger, a grocery business, disentangling itself from a partnership for warehouse automation by declaring an impairment; and Walmart, a general retail business, supporting a warehouse automation tech startup that so far doesn’t turn a profit, and therefore drags down Walmart’s net income.

The things you can learn about corporate strategy just by looking in the footnotes!