Sainsbury’s reveals ‘unsatisfactory’ results
The latest results from J Sainsbury failed to impress the City, with the supermarket group’s share price falling over 3% by the close of trading.
Like-for-like sales at Sainsbury’s stores were down by 0.2% – a poor performance, according to most analysts, considering the buoyant state of the sector.
The second quarter figures put Sainsbury’s even further behind market leader Tesco, which reported sales increases of 6% for the six months to August.
And the group’s lacklustre performance has seen Asda overtake it as the UK’s second largest supermarket chain.
Chief executive Sir Peter Davis claimed that the figures had been disrupted by the fact that Sainsbury’s is in the final stages of ‘an ambitious business transformation programme’ which involves a new IT infrastructure, a new supply chain, and modernised stores.
He continued: ‘While we are not satisfied with our current sales performance our first priority is to complete the programme.’ That should happen by March next year, when the group expects to have made cumulative cost savings of £700m.
Sir Peter also claimed that customer satisfaction had improved and that it would be taking on 10,000 extra staff over the festive period to improve service further.
Sainsbury’s is also planning a major product re-launch with 3,000 non-food lines being rolled out this autumn to try and compete with the success of general merchandising at Asda in particular.
