The nationals have gone big on yesterday’s latest round of supermarket results. The Guardian painted a positive picture for Tesco, focusing on its “biggest ever Christmas” in 2024, with the UK’s largest supermarket chain landing its biggest share of the festive shopping trolley since 2016.
Marks & Spencer also had a “good Christmas” with strong sales of food, reported The Guardian. However, the paper also spotlighted the retailer’s warnings that it would have to find new ways of to cut costs in the face of the government’s tax increases.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph, the FT and the Mail played up potential price increases at the retailers. Concerns over rising costs and tax increases had sent shares in both retailers lower on Thursday morning.
Shares in M&S fell 6% in morning trading in London, while Tesco dropped 2.7% before a partial recovery, reported the FT. Both retailers had been clobbered by the Chancellor’s raid on National Insurance contributions, reported the Mail.
Bumper sales had been overshadowed by these developments, wrote the Times. Yet, the paper took an optimistic stance on M&S’s pricing strategy, focusing on the retailer’s pledge to pass on “as little as possible” to shoppers.
Investment manager Terry Smith has dumped his underperforming £22.5bn fund’s stake in Diageo. The FT, the Times and the Mail all focused on Smith’s fears weight-loss drugs like Ozempic could hamper demand for alcoholic drinks.
In his annual letter, Smith had also expressed concerns over Diageo’s “new management”, which has been led by Debra Crew since June 2023, due to a “lack of information about its Latin American business which produced results far worse than the sector in this area”.
Greggs’ results also generated headlines at the nationals, with the FT and the Mail focusing on its plummeting shares. Shares fell more than 10% on Thursday with the company blaming weak consumer confidence and a “more challenging market backdrop” for a slowdown in sales.
Meanwhile, the Guardian focused on Greggs’ defence of its decision to increase the price of its sausage rolls by 5p to £1.30. Roisin Currie, the chief executive of Greggs, said the price rises were driven by the chain passing on increases to its wage bill, with two-thirds of Greggs workers handed a 6.1% pay rise this month.
The Mail featured an exclusive interview with Hannah Gibson, in which the Ocado boss revealed the online retailer had recently hit a record 500,000 orders a week.
"We knew coming out of Covid that we were too expensive," Gibson told the Mail. "We have taken a lot of actions over the last 18 months to bring prices down."
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