Asda reports third quarter sales decline as it invests £13 million in festive store hours
Asda has seen its third quarter revenue decline by 2.5% to £5.3 billion as it continues its work to improve the customer experience in its stores.
In the three months to 30 September like-for-like sales fell by 4.8%, which marked an improvement on the previous quarter.
In its second quarter update, the supermarket announced how it would be working to improve the shopping experience for customers during the ‘Golden Quarter’. Plans included working to improve availability, enhancing the customer experience and investing in value, as well as providing an additional £30 million for store hours.
Asda now says the initiatives are beginning to make a difference, with customer perceptions of availability improving noticeably both in stores and online during the third quarter.
The supermarket is also investing a further £13 million in store hours during the busy ‘Golden Quarter’ period.
Lord Rose, Asda’s chairman, explained: “We have undergone the largest transformation in our history during the last three years – doubling our store footprint, expanding into strategically important growth markets of convenience and food-to-go, and overhauling our digital capabilities.
“We have laid solid foundations to drive long term growth, but the unprecedented scale of these changes has absorbed a huge amount of the leadership’s time with a temporary impact on Asda’s customer experience in stores.
“As a key priority, we have been investing further and taking the right decisions to deliver an enhanced and more consistent in-store experience for our customers, as we set out in our Q2 results in August.
“Now it is time to deliver the best possible experience in our stores day-in-day out – and pull out all the stops for customers this Christmas and beyond. I would like to thank all our colleagues sincerely for their hard work and ongoing dedication.”
Following the conversion of 478 convenience stores acquired from the Co-op and EG UK, Asda is resuming its standalone Express stores rollout. This will include two new store openings in Castleford and Finsbury Park next month and a further six launches by the year-end, with a focus on residential and city centre locations.
Asda said its ‘Project Future,’ which involves separating over 2,500 systems from former owner Walmart and establishing the technological foundation for future growth, is proceeding at pace.
This has included migrating large parts of its operations to new platforms including finance, HR, CRM, depots, George.com, checkouts, and in-store picking systems.
