SHARES in Morrisons fell around four per cent this morning after the grocery chain reported slower growth in like-for-like sales over Christmas against comparisons with the year before.
The supermarket giant, which is the first of the big four grocers to report on festive trading this week, announced like-for-like retail sales growth of 0.6 per cent in the nine weeks to January 9. But while this marked a fourth successive year of Christmas sales growth, its performance lagged its showing over the last festive season and fell short of analysts' expectations.
Bradford-based, which has been slashing prices to compete with discounters Aldi and Lidl and counter flagging consumer confidence, Morrisons had reported like for like retail sales growth of 2.1% in the 10 weeks to January 7 last year.
The grocer noted that there had been a “change in consumer behaviour during the period”, which coincided with disappointing sales across the high street at key trading times before Christmas.
Overall group sales at Morrisons, excluding fuel, rose by 3.6% in the nine weeks to January 6, compared with 2.8% in the 10 weeks to January 7 last year. That included growth of three per cent in its wholesale division, which supplies groceries to the McColl’s chain of convenience stores.
Pub giant Greene King has plenty to cheer about after like for like sales growth of 10.9 per cent in the last two weeks, including record Christmas Day sales of £7.7 million.
The company, which owns the Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar and hundreds of pubs in Scotland, cited strong growth in its Greene King Local Pub branded outlets, with all categories recording growth in the last six weeks.
Shares climbed nearly five per cent early in the session.
Away from the listed company scene, Scottish law firm Brodies has announced that chairman Christine O’Neill has been re-elected to serve third consecutive term in the role.
Ms O’Neill, regarded as one of Scotland’s foremost litigation and public law lawyers, will guide the firm through the next three years. Brodies’ managing partner Nick Scott said: “It is very welcome news that Christine has been re-elected to serve a third term as our chairman. Christine is one of the leading lawyers of her generation and for her client focus and commitment, she is held in the highest regard by our clients and within our business.”
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