30th Sep 2015 06:17
LONDON (Alliance News) - J Sainsbury PLC Wednesday said its full-year underlying pretax profit will be "moderately ahead" of consensus after it achieved growth in sales in the second quarter of its financial year.
The supermarket chain said that total retail sales in the 16 weeks to September 26 grew 0.3% excluding fuel, but fell 1.8% including fuel. Like-for-like retail sales, however, declined for the seventh consecutive quarter, falling 1.1% excluding fuel and 3.3% including fuel.
This was an improvement on the first quarter, though, when like-for-like revenue excluding fuel decreased 2.1% and total sales excluding fuel declined 0.6%.
"During the quarter we saw an improvement in our key trading metrics. Both volume and transactions grew as the decline in average basket spend in supermarkets continued to stabilise. Whilst the market is clearly still challenging, with food deflation impacting many categories, we are making good progress on delivering our strategy," Chief Executive Mike Coupe said in a statement.
"Year-to-date we have traded well, with both sales and cost savings ahead of expectations. Should current market trends continue, we expect our full year underlying profit before tax to be moderately ahead of our published consensus," he added.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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