Sainsbury's turned in a good performance over Christmas and in the last quarter, matching analysts' expectations and silencing the doom merchants.
Like-for-like sales excluding fuel, which also strip out the impact of new outlets, were up 3.7 per cent in the 12 weeks to December 29.
Justin King, chief executive, said: " This is a good result for the Christmas quarter, and is particularly pleasing given the level of competition during this period. We have now completed 12 consecutive quarters of like-for-like sales growth delivering strong three-year growth ahead of our expectations.
"As a result of this continued strong sales momentum, we are also delighted to report that we have now successfully achieved our goal of £2.5 billion of additional sales since March 2005. This significant milestone in our recovery was surpassed early in quarter four, three months ahead of plan.”
More than 21.5 million customers shopped at Sainsbury's in the seven days before Christmas, he said and more than 300,000 customers per hour on December 23, the busiest trading day of the week.
"Over the quarter we continued our investment in the customer offer to ensure our price position remains competitive for customers whilst continuing to provide the additional quality Sainsbury's products have to offer. We also delivered a number of market-leading promotions in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We experienced good growth across our product range with our basics value entry range and our Taste the difference premium range recording the strongest growth of all our sub brands.”
King echoed the sentiments of M&S chief executive Sir Stuart Rose, who yesterday predicted a tight year for consumer budgets and consequently an increasingly competitive retail landscape.
"Consumer budgets are clearly under pressure and we expect the market to continue to be very competitive," said King. “The improvements we have made to our business during our recovery means we are well equipped to perform in this challenging environment and we remain confident in our ability to deliver our growth plans."
Sainsbury’s will push on with its extensive store-opening programme. "We are continuing to develop our store estate and are on track to deliver our 2007/08 opening programme. During the quarter we opened 12 new supermarkets, extended five existing stores and refurbished 17 stores including our original 'green' store at Greenwich which reopened in November with significantly enhanced energy efficiency credentials. We also opened eight new convenience stores.” King said.
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