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After announcing a big cut in annual profits yesterday and the dividend it pays its staff, there was some cheer for Waitrose bosses this morning as its weekly sales ticked up slightly after their recent flatlining.

In the week to 7 March, sales (excluding petrol) were up 1.2%. Though this still represents a like-for-like decline of around 3%, the figure takes the sales rise for the first five weeks of the year up to 0.5%.

Waitrose said it had been boosted by “shoppers preparing for Mothering Sunday”, adding: “While the drag effect of food price deflation continues, a sunny first week of March helped grow provisional sales.”

Yesterday Waitrose announced that year-end operating profits fell 23.4% to £237.4m, or down 24.4% on a 52-week basis. Sales on a like-for-like basis climbed 1.4% excluding petrol.

The dividend its parent John Lewis Group pays to staff was cut to a 12-year low, cutting the annual payment to 11% of staff salary.

Morning update

After a hectic day yesterday with Morrisons and Waitrose announcing full year results, this morning is proving a far more sedate affair.

Nielsen will have its UK supermarket market share figures out later this morning, with all eyes on Tesco to see if the numbers back Kantar’s suggestion earlier this week that Dave Lewis has transformed it to the best performing of the big four.

The main stock market mover this morning has been Diageo (DGE), which has opened 1.6% down to 1,852p. Investors look to be locking in their profits from the drinks group’s 1.8% jump yesterday. Ocado has opened 1.2% up at 381.8p.

Yeseterday in the City

Morrisons’ (MRW) near-£800m annual loss was the supermarket’s largest for six years and represented four-fold increase on the previous year’s figures. The market reacted by sending Morrisons 2.3% down to under 200p in early trading, with momentum not helped by chairman Andrew Higginson warning: “Last year’s trading environment was tough, and we don’t expect any change this year.”

However, trading momentum improved during the day and Morrisons ended the day 0.5% up at 207.6p as the more optimistic-minded saw signs of encouragement in the fourth quarter sales growth. David Gray, analyst at Planet Retail, noted: “As anticipated, Morrisons has posted an improving, if somewhat subdued, like-for-like performance, suggesting recent measures like the price comparison loyalty scheme are beginning to bear fruit.”

Morrisons’ online trading partner Ocado (OCDO) dipped 0.9% to 377.1p, but has still has a strong week after its own sales update on Tuesday. The online supermarket’s shares are up almost 4% over the past week.

Elsewhere, there was a dramatic slump in the share price of Argos owner Home Retail Group after a 5% fall in Argos’ like-for-like sales during the eight weeks to February 28. The shares fell 11% to 174p.

More widely, the FTSE 100 was up almost 40 points to 6761.1pts as investor sentiment was buoyed by the £1.7bn for retail bank TSB by Spain’s Banco de Sabadell.

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