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Fresh from updating the market on its half year results yesterday, Waitrose has reported a 1.2% uplift in ex petrol sales for the week to 5 September.
Including petrol, the weekly sales were up 1%. The sales figures are similar to the half-year sales rise of 1.1% announced yesterday, which translated to a 1.3% drop in like-for-like sales.
Sales for the first five weeks of the second half of its financial year are currently running up 1.8% (ex petrol). Including petrol sales are up 1.6% during the period.
Waitrose retail director Rob Collins said: “The start of the new school term, together with a period of cooler weather, helped trigger the arrival of autumnal eating habits with soups and vegetables helping drive sales.”
Sales at its Welcome Break motorway service station shops saw sales increase by 14% as people continued to travel the country at the end of the holiday season.
Morning update
After retail’s “super Thursday” yesterday comes a significantly less than super Friday this morning as we end the week with a quiet day.
Yesterday in the US Mondelez updated investors on its full-year expectations after CFO Brian Gladden spoke at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples conference in London.
Gladden said the Cadbury owner planned to shift its focus towards healthier snacks and target more affluent consumers, while Mondelez reaffirmed its 2015 growth outlook. It is targeting organic net revenue growth of at least 3%, including a 100bps headwind from “strategic decisions to improve the revenue mix”. The company continues to target pro forma adjusted operating income margin of approximately 14% in 2015, excluding a negative 20-30bps basis point impact from “stranded costs”.
The FTSE has eased back 0.2% to 6,142.6pts on opening today, but most of the major fmcg and grocery stocks have opened more significantly down.
Morrisons has dropped another 0.9% this morning back to 169.4p, while Coca Cola HBC is 1.3% down to 1,311p. Also trending down are Associated British Foods (ABF), down 0.9% to 3,119p and Sainsbury’s (SBRY), 0.6% down to 237.4p.
Yesterday in the City
The scale of Morrisons’ falling sales and profits should not have come as a surprise to the City, but its closure of 11 UK supermarkets at the expense of 900 jobs seemed to give Morrisons investors the jitters.
Morrisons dropped over 4% to under 166p in early trading, before recovering somewhat to end the day 2.8% down at 170.9p. Morrisons had experienced a strong share price rally on Wednesday after details of the sale of its M Local convenience chain emerged, so the share remain 2.6% up so far this week.
The continued struggle for sales growth from Waitrose and Morrisons affected the rest of the grocers, with Tesco’s (TSCO) 3% share price fall to 185.6p eventually topping Morrisons’ own share price drop. Sainsbury’s fell 1.9% to 238.9p, while Ocado (OCDO) dropped 3.9% to 323.6p on after key partner Waitrose announced sharply lower online sales.
It was a downbeat day generally for the FTSE after a better week. The FTSE 100 closed down 1.2% to 6,155.8pts as the market followed Asian share prices down.
Other significant movers included Unilever (ULVR), down 2.3% to 2,567p, PZ Cussons (PZC), down 3.5% to 291.7p and Poundland (PLND), which fell 2.7% to 330p.
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