The latest Kantar Worldpanel market share data gets considerable traction today as the papers attempt to make sense of the ongoing brutal price war, the rise and rise of the discounters and the recovery of Tesco.
The Guardian focuses on the woes of Asda, which has been the chief victim of a turnaround at Tesco and the march of Aldi and Lidl, with sales plunging 2.1% in the 12 weeks to 1 March and its market share declining to 17%. It was the supermarket’s worst sales performance in more than 20 years.
The Times (£) leads with the Tesco turnaround angle and said the efforts of new boss Dave Lewis were “beginning to bear fruit”. Kantar’s data for the period showed that Tesco delivered its best sales performance in 18 months as till receipts rose by 1.1% to £7.51bn as it clawed back customers from Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s.
The Financial Times (£) takes the same line, concentrating on a Tesco sales rise of 1.1%, making it the only one of the big four supermarkets to achieve growth.
Following Ocado’s Q1 update yesterday, The Telegraph examines its relationship with Morrisons for signs of any weakness. The online grocer played down the prospect of Morrisons pulling out of the £216m tie-up and claimed that Morrisons.com was the fastest growing online business ever, the paper said. Ocado CFO Duncan Tatton-Brown said the threat of Morrisons looking to renegotiate the partnership was “not on the list of expected issues” and that Morrisons chairman Andy Higginson seemed “pretty happy” with the arrangement.
Ahead of MPs voting on plain packaging rules for cigarettes later today, The Times (£) reports that big tobacco companies have warned the regulations could drive up counterfeiting because of the removal of “track and trace” coding from the packets. The industry called for a delay on the implementation of plain packaging until 2020.
Procter & Gamble has been slapped with a fine as it became the latest multinational company to face scrutiny from the Chinese authorities. The Shanghai government imposed a fine of RMB6m ($958k) for what regulators said was false advertising for Crest toothpaste. The watchdog added the brand overstated some claims about its toothpaste and digitally altered images used in advertising to make teeth look whiter (The Financial Times £).
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