Sainsbury’s is in an envious position this week after reporting a better-than-expected 7.1% increase in annual pre-tax profits to £712m.

The chain’s full-year results, published on Wednesday, sparked a 3.5% jump in its share price to 312p by Thursday lunchtime.

“Justin King has done a very good job of turning Sainsbury’s around and changing consumer price perception,” said Panmure analyst Philip Dorgan.

In January, Sainsbury’s share price was caught in the aftershock of the Tesco profit warning - falling 8% in the first half of the month. Since then, Sainsbury’s has recovered all the lost ground, unlike Tesco and Morrisons whose share prices have flatlined.

There was some consolation in the Sainsbury’s results for rivals, however. The supermarket said it would grow space by about 5%, or one million square feet, this year - less than analysts had expected. Dorgan said the plans signalled an end to the space race and a shift of focus across the sector onto shareholder returns.

However, that sentiment has yet to rally Tesco and Morrisons’ share prices - both of which edged down on Wednesday.

On the same day, Danish brewer Carlsberg saw a 4% increase in its share price to 490 Danish crowns despite reporting a 43% slump in operating profits to DKK574m (£62m). Investors had expected a January tax hike in Russia - which accounts for almost a third of Carlsberg’s beer sales - to hit profits, and were cheered by news that the company had increased its share of the shrinking Russian beer market.

Back in the UK, analysts at Investec offered up some upbeat assessments of two FTSE-listed suppliers. The broker upgraded its recommendation for Tate & Lyle to ‘hold’, admitting the correction in the share price it had predicted had failed to materialise. “Like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, our defence is that we have been misled,” it said, explaining that it had over-reacted to a discrepancy between the share price performance of Tate & Lyle compared with its US peers.

And ahead of Dairy Crest’s prelims on 24 May, Investec said the potential sale of St Hubert and the planned closure of two dairies gave the company “some upside potential”.

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