Tesco is on course to hit profit targets after it delivered strong sales growth during the busy Christmas trading period (The Times £).
The UK’s largest supermarket revealed that group like-for-like sales in the UK and Ireland, excluding fuel, grew by 7.9% over the six weeks to 7 January, compared with the same period last year (The Mail). This came after 5.7% growth over the quarter to 26 November.
Tesco’s chief executive has warned that UK inflation could rise higher before it comes down later this year as consumers increasingly trade down to cheaper products (The Financial Times £).
The Tempus shares column in The Times (£) concludes Tesco shares are a ‘hold’. “The shares are not cheap considering the uncertainty over sales volumes this year.”
Marks & Spencer took its biggest share of the clothing and homewares market in seven years and the largest slice of the food market ever over Christmas, while Tesco enjoyed its strongest-ever day of sales on 23 December (The Guardian).
Mark & Spencer has reported strong Christmas trading as shoppers snapped up its food and its market share in clothing and home rose to a seven-year high (The Times £).
The retailer reported a better-than-expected 6.3% increase in like-for-like sales across its food halls in the 13 weeks to 31 December (The Mail).
Marks and Spencer’s share of the UK clothing market reached its highest level in almost eight years after a robust Christmas period, fuelling hopes its years-long restructuring is paying off (The Financial Times £).
Suits are back, Marks & Spencer has said, as sales of formalwear jumped 40% after workers started returning to the office (The Telegraph). M&S stopped selling suits in many of its stores in 2021 amid a slump in demand caused by the pandemic and the rise of working from home.
The business editorial in The Guardian takes a look at all the Christmas retail trading updates and asks: “Was there a Christmas miracle on the high street?”. It’s answer: “Not quite.”
The Lex column in The Financial Times (£) examines UK retail following all the trading updates. The papers argues that the bumper Christmas numbers reported by retailers were not delivered by shoppers splashing out but because they “wallowed last year’s inflation pill so as not to cancel Christmas”. “But the frothy sales figures of many January updates will lose some fizz when flagging profits join the mix in later announcements.”
A market report in The Times (£) tackles the Hilton Foods update and says the meat packer produced some Christmas cheer. “Hilton Food Group surprised the market, not with a profit warning, unlike the last couple of times it has updated the City, but with news of a strong trading performance over the festive season.”
Friends and families gathered together to eat and drink over the festive season for the first time since Covid, boosting Christmas sales in the face of the cost of living crisis, according to hospitality companies Whitbread, which owns Premier Inn, and the pub and restaurant group Mitchells & Butlers (The Guardian).
The economy grew 0.1% in November, raising the possibility that the economy avoided entering recession at the end of last year (The Times £).
Annual US inflation fell in December to its lowest level in more than a year, in a further sign that price pressures have peaked amid the Federal Reserve’s historic campaign to tighten monetary policy (The Financial Times £).
Inflation retreated in the United States last month, bolstering confidence that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign to bring it down is working (The Times £).
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