Sainsbury’s heartened by improving sales trend
Petrol sales push up like-for-likes
Sainsbury’s has taken heart from a sales improvement over the Christmas period, despite like-for-like sales declining when petrol sales are factored out.
Across the 12 weeks to January 1, the supermarket chain saw total sales growth of 6.1 per cent, with 2.7 per cent growth when petrol is excluded. Third quarter like-for-like sales grew by 2.4 per cent, down 1.2 per cent excluding petrol, while like-for-like sales in the four weeks to January 1 were up 2.5 per cent, but down 0.4 per cent excluding petrol. Sainsbury’s improvements to product availability and customer service, at the heart of chief executive Justin King’s three-year strategy for the recovery of the business, is showing signs of delivering, with total sales growth above the the rate seen in the first half. King said: “Supermarket like-for-like sales growth for this quarter was in line with quarter two and was supported by strong petrol sales. After a difficult November, there was an improving trend over the Christmas and New Year period, which is encouraging given the tougher comparatives for the same period last year. This sales performance was in line with our plans and was a good first step in delivering our sales led recovery. “We were particularly pleased with the levels of availability and customer service achieved over the Christmas period. We are committed to making continuous improvements to our operations and have put a number of actions in place to ensure progress, particularly around product availability and store labour. Our customers are starting to see the benefit.” [img r]sainsburysjustinking.jpg[/img]King ([i]pictured[/i])added: “The market was very competitive in the third quarter and early indications are that the fourth quarter will be challenging with renewed pricing activity. We are continuing to invest in the customer offer, providing great quality products at fair prices and have improved our competitive pricing position. “Since this time last year, we have lowered the prices of 6,000 products and our overriding objective is to deliver a competitive offer for our customers.” Sainsbury’s also confirmed that 750 head office roles will be shed by April, with redeployment to store based roles offered to anyone facing redundancy. The recruitment of an extra 3,000 store staff is now largely complete.
