Albertsons withdrew its financial forecasts on Tuesday, the clearest sign yet of how deeply newly appointed executive chair Meg Whitman intends to overhaul the struggling grocery chain.

The company reported net sales of $18.9 billion for its second fiscal quarter, weighed down by a 0.8% drop in identical sales, a metric that strips out newly opened or closed stores. It was the second consecutive quarterly decline, following shrinking growth in the preceding quarter. In addition to its namesake stores, Albertsons operates 21 other chains, including Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Tom Thumb, and Randalls.

CEO Susan Morris unveiled a plan in July called “ACI Edge,” aimed at improving the company's competitiveness by reviewing its strategy, cost structure, operations, and portfolio of brands. On Tuesday, the company said it would withhold financial guidance until that review is complete, leaving investors without a company-issued yardstick for sales or earnings in the meantime. The move suggests the turnaround under Whitman, the longtime technology executive who joined Albertsons last month, may run deeper than initially planned.

“Everything should be on the table,” Whitman told Wall Street analysts on Albertsons' quarterly conference call. “Dramatic improvement is needed now. Albertsons must move faster to change the trajectory of the business.”

Squeezed shoppers and a heavy cost base

Like grocers across the industry, Albertsons is grappling with cash-strapped shoppers whose spending on nonessentials has been eroded by food inflation and higher gas prices. The company's challenge is compounded by a cost structure that runs higher than its rivals', leaving it with less room to maneuver and shield consumers from rising prices than discount grocers such Walmart and Kroger or bulk operators like Sam's Club and Costco. The gap reflects a structural feature of grocery retail: it is a high-volume, thin-margin business, and scale largely determines how much pricing pressure a retailer can absorb.

The current stretch of food inflation has been particularly bruising for Albertsons. Its lower-income customers are trading down to less expensive items and store brands, which either pinches the company's margins or sends shoppers to Walmart and Kroger. “The reality right now is that the economy is tough for many of our customers,” Morris said.

Albertsons' sprawling empire of store chains has also produced complex operations and the higher costs that come with them, making it harder to stay flexible on pricing.

Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, called Albertsons' prices “ridiculously high compared to rivals,” adding that this “would be partly justifiable if other dimensions—store experience, service, private label, and so forth—were above par, but they're not.” To remedy that, he said, Albertsons would need to “invest in prices”—retail-speak for lowering them—which in turn adds pressure to find cost savings.

A turnaround specialist takes the chair

Whitman brings no grocery experience and little retail experience beyond her tenure as CEO of eBay. Albertsons recruited her for her turnaround record and decisiveness.

After taking the reins at Hewlett-Packard in 2011, she simplified the structure and product portfolio of a company that had been damaged by its acquisition of Autonomy Corp., whipsawed by strategy flip-flops, and hit by declining revenue and margins. She went on to oversee the company's split into two and subsequently led Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the enterprise-technology business created by that split, before later serving as U.S. ambassador to Kenya. Before that, across a decade at the helm of eBay, she professionalized the management structure and operations of the hot tech startup, setting it up for a period of fast growth.

Whitman's comments to analysts suggest there will be no sacred cows under her watch. She hinted that Albertsons could shed some brands through “potential strategic actions.” The bet, in effect, is that the simplify-and-focus playbook she applied in technology can transfer to a low-margin, operationally complex industry.

A leadership transition already underway

Morris became CEO in 2025 after the collapse, a few months earlier, of the planned $24 billion merger between Albertsons and Kroger, which was followed by the exit of both companies' chiefs. Albertsons is currently suing Kroger for $9 billion over the failed deal. Morris had spent the previous seven years as the company's operations chief.

Even before Whitman's appointment, Morris had begun making Albertsons more flexible, cutting the number of operating regions from 11 to four to generate economies of scale and speed up decision-making, and centralizing much of the company's merchandising decisions under a single team.

As executive chair—a role considerably more hands-on than a traditional chairmanship—Whitman will serve as a close operational and strategic adviser to Morris, helping leadership sharpen strategy, improve execution, and act with speed. How far the overhaul goes should become clearer once the ACI Edge review concludes. Between the review's outcome, the “potential strategic actions” Whitman flagged, and the pending $9 billion lawsuit against Kroger, several threads of the turnaround story remain open.

This story was originally published on Fortune.