Tesco posts strong Christmas sales
Tesco has reported strong trading with UK and Republic of Ireland like-for-like sales rising by 2.6% over Christmas and by 1.9% in its third quarter.
The core Tesco UK business saw its third quarter like-for-like sales increase by 0.7% to mark its twelfth consecutive quarter of growth. Christmas sales rose by 2.2%. To counteract a challenging market, the supermarket said it made further improvements to its customer offer and by the end of the period had relaunched over 74% of its 10,000 own brand products.
Tesco said customers responded well to its Christmas proposition. Its ‘Festive 5’ vegetable deal was particularly popular with 19.7 million units sold over the three weeks to Christmas. In addition, half-price lamb and beef joints contributed to like-for-like sales growth of 12.2% in total meat joints.
Online like-for-like sales increased by 2.6% over the Christmas period which included Tesco’s biggest-ever sales week in online grocery. During the week the retailer processed 776,000 orders and delivered nearly 51 million items.
Looking overseas, Tesco ‘s central Europe sales were down 3% in the third quarter while sales in Asia dropped by 8%.
Commenting on the performance, Dave Lewis, Tesco chief executive, said: “As a team we have achieved a lot in the last 19 weeks. In the UK we delivered significant improvements in our competitive offer and this is reflected in a very strong Christmas performance which was ahead of the market.
“In Central Europe, the reshaping of our business continues and we are confident of the outcome we envisaged. In Asia, negotiations with suppliers are concluding satisfactorily and we can see this in our simpler, clearer, more impactful offer for customers.
“We have more to do everywhere but remain bang on track to deliver our plans for the year and as we enter our centenary we are in a strong position.”
