Investors in supermarkets remain a tough bunch to please, with the City unmoved by an eighth consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth at Morrisons.
Shares fell more than 1% on Thursday morning despite a 2.5% jump in like-for-like sales in the 13 weeks to 29 October - with the stock still down 1% to 221.7p at the time of writing (lunchtime).
The sales increase came in below analyst consensus for the second quarter in a row, with 2.1% of growth generated from traditional retail operations and 0.4% from its burgeoning wholesale business supplying Amazon and forecourts.
Morrisons and its supermarket peers are among the most shorted stocks on the London exchange as US hedge funds make large bets that the sector will continue to struggle with inflation, discounters, price wars and the threat of Amazon.
And investors remain pessimistic about supermarket - and retail - stocks due to economic and political uncertainty in the UK too. The mults are struggling to translate rising food prices into concrete gains as they battle to remain competitive with each other, Aldi and Lidl.
House broker Shore Capital remained upbeat: “In a clearly competitive UK grocery market, we see Morrison delivering sustained year-on-year growth-on-growth as a real achievement of CEO David Potts and his team. The company enters the forthcoming ‘peak’ trading period in good shape and on the front foot.”
Kellogg’s soared 6.2% to $62.63 on Tuesday as the US cereal and snacking giant recorded its first rise in sales for more than two years as its Project K cost-cutting strategy and expansion into healthier foods made headway. Shares were up more than 8% in early trading before falling back slightly as net sales nudged up 0.6% to $3.3bn in the three months ended 30 September, albeit mostly the result of a $430m acquisition of Brazilian biscuits, pasta and powdered beverages maker Parati Group in October 2016. Analysts who had expected another decline were surprised.
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