Sainsbury's sales outshine flat Tesco

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/02/sainsburys-sales-outshines-tesco

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Sainsbury's, Britain's third-biggest grocer, met forecasts with a pickup in quarterly sales driven by growth at local convenience stores and online, outperforming rivals including market leader Tesco.

The group, which trails Tesco and Wal-Mart's Asda by annual revenue, said on Wednesday sales at stores open more than a year rose 2%, excluding fuel, in the 16 weeks to 28 September, its second quarter.

The outcome, a 35th consecutive quarter of underlying sales growth, compares with analyst forecasts of a rise of 1.5-2.8% and first quarter growth of 0.8%.

Sainsbury's performance was ahead of flat second-quarter UK like-for-like sales at Tesco.

Tesco, which is one-to-two years into a recovery plan, posted flat quarterly sales in its home market as £1bn of investment failed to translate into rising sales.

Britain's biggest retailer and the world's third largest said sales at UK stores open over a year, excluding fuel and VAT sales tax, showed zero growth in the 13 weeks to 24 August.

That second quarter performance compares with analyst forecasts in a range of flat to -0.5% and does represent an improvement on a first quarter decline of 1%.

Tesco, which trails America's Wal-Mart and France's Carrefour in annual sales, said group trading profit fell 7.6% to £1.59bn in the six months to 24 August, in line with analyst forecasts.

Earlier on Wednesday Tesco said it would inject retail assets and $558m (£345m) in cash into a hypermarket joint venture with China Resources Enterprise.

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