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Reuters Shoppers walk past the first ’till-free’ Sainsbury’s store in London, Britain, May 1, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Sainsbury PLC said Wednesday that like-for-like sales excluding fuel for the 15 weeks ended Jan. 4 fell 0.7% and cautioned over continued uncertain market conditions due to competitive and promotional markets.
The U.K.’s second largest grocer SBRY, +1.94% by market share said like-for-like sales excluding fuel for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 continued the negative trend of the first two quarters and compares with a 1.1% drop for the third quarter of fiscal 2019. This contradicts the projection of sales growth given in September 2019.
Sainsbury didn’t provide any updated guidance regarding fiscal 2020 profit expectations. It said in September that underlying pretax profit, which strips out exceptional and other one-off items, was expected to be in line with market expectations of 632 million pounds ($830.7 million). The company made an underlying pretax profit of GBP635 million for the year ended March 9, 2019.
The company said its strategy for this year is to focus on catalogue diversification and investment in client offer, customer experience, and connected services.
