Sainsbury's posted its sixth straight quarter of falling sales as the country's supermarket price war shows little sign of easing.
The chain reported same store sales excluding fuel down a worse-than-expected 2.1% in the 12 weeks to June 6, which comes on top of a 1.9% drop in the previous three months.
Sainsbury's remains under pressure from falling UK food prices and as the big four grocers engage in fierce competition amid a scramble for market share, which is being eaten away by discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe, who took over from long-standing predecessor Justin King last July, unveiled a wide-ranging plan to fight back against the discounters in November which included price cuts to 1,100 items and improvements in quality to 3,000 own-brand products.
But Mr Coupe said today: "Trading conditions are still being impacted by strong levels of food deflation and a highly competitive pricing backdrop.
"These pressures, including the effect of our own targeted price investment, have led to a fall in like-for-like sales for the quarter."
Mr Coupe promised to "match whatever our competitors throw at us" after Morrisons fired the latest salvo in the price war earlier this week, with new boss David Potts announcing that prices on 200 items including milk, butter and bread would be slashed by as much as a third.
Mr Coupe said in November the business would spend £150 million on cutting prices over the year.
He insisted in the latest update there were encouraging signs despite the like-for-like sales fall, with sales volumes and transactions growing over the group's first quarter.
He added: "We are slightly ahead of where we expected to be."
Sainsbury's reported its first annual loss in a decade last month, falling into the red by £72 million after writing down £628 million on the value of its property estate.
The latest industry data from Kantar Worldpanel for the 12 weeks to May 24 found that Morrisons was the only one of the Big Four supermarkets to grow sales. Sainsbury's saw its sales fall 0.3% but held its market share at 16.5%, according to the data.
During the first quarter, Sainsbury's introduced new speciality breads and improved its own-brand seasonal offerings such as BBQ smoked chilli pulled pork and BBQ sweet chilli chicken thighs.
It opened its 300th petrol station in Livingston during the period and opened 20 grocery click and collect sites, adding it is on track to have a total of 100 sites open by the end of the year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article