{"id":360600,"date":"2026-01-09T09:04:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T09:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/360600\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T09:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T09:04:06","slug":"sainsburys-christmas-sales-rise-as-strong-grocery-offsets-weak-general-merchandise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/360600\/","title":{"rendered":"Sainsbury’s Christmas sales rise as strong grocery offsets weak general merchandise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q3 like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, up 3.4%Grocery sales up 5.4%General merchandise and clothing sales down 1.1%Maintains profit outlook for 2025\/26 yearLONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Sainsbury’s (SBRY.L), opens new tab<\/a>, Britain’s second-largest supermarket group, on Friday reported a 3.4% rise in underlying sales for the key Christmas quarter as strong grocery sales outweighed softer general merchandise trading.The group, which trails only Tesco (TSCO.L), opens new tab<\/a> by market share, said it still expected to deliver full-year retail underlying operating profit of “more than 1 billion pounds” ($1.34 billion) for its year to March 2026, versus 1.04 billion pounds made in 2024\/25.<\/p>\n

Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sainsbury’s said grocery sales rose 5.4% over the 16 weeks to January 3 year-on-year.<\/p>\n

However, general merchandise and clothing sales within Sainsbury’s fell 1.1% and sales were down 1.0% in the Argos business.<\/p>\n

Industry data<\/a> published on Tuesday showed Sainsbury’s ended 2025 with a UK grocery market share of 16.3%, up 30 basis points on the year.<\/p>\n

“We have won grocery market share for the sixth consecutive Christmas period, again delivering our winning combination of value, quality, service and availability for customers,” CEO Simon Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Sainsbury’s update, following one from Tesco<\/a> on Thursday, confirmed that the two biggest supermarket groups are continuing to outperform the wider UK retail market with their focus on value at a time of subdued consumer confidence<\/a>, still high inflation<\/a> and weakening employment<\/a>.Both have continued to benefit from the enduring trend<\/a> of UK consumers eating more at home rather than dining out to save cash, and at Christmas, they both saw customers prioritise<\/a> festive food over spending on clothing.<\/p>\n

Sainsbury’s said fresh food lines in its premium ‘Taste the Difference’ range soared 15% in the Christmas quarter.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, both Marks & Spencer (MKS.L), opens new tab<\/a> and Primark (ABF.L), opens new tab<\/a> reported subdued clothing sales.<\/p>\n

Shares in Sainsbury’s have increased 25% over the last year.<\/p>\n

($1 = 0.7448 pounds)<\/p>\n

Reporting by James Davey; editing by Sarah Young<\/p>\n

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q3 like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, up 3.4%Grocery sales up 5.4%General merchandise and clothing sales down 1.1%Maintains profit outlook…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[131627,40850,131628,138314,136117,133609,133617,90974,133614,133622,131633,90980,137815,90973,90979,90970,90975,90971,132301,132264,38732,90963,137410,11699,59,57,58,138308,138309,132271,132627,50,131631,138310,138311,137414,138315,136111,138312,138313,132312,56,54,55,90962],"class_list":{"0":"post-360600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-bact","9":"tag-biz","10":"tag-cmpny","11":"tag-csent","12":"tag-destabn","13":"tag-destabx","14":"tag-destbnx","15":"tag-destdnp","16":"tag-deste","17":"tag-destfun","18":"tag-destoukbsm","19":"tag-destoukdnm","20":"tag-destpco","21":"tag-destpsc","22":"tag-destrbn","23":"tag-destrnp","24":"tag-destucdptest","25":"tag-destuki","26":"tag-eci","27":"tag-eco","28":"tag-emea","29":"tag-europ","30":"tag-fdrt","31":"tag-fin","32":"tag-gb","33":"tag-great-britain","34":"tag-greatbritain","35":"tag-kpirtl","36":"tag-kpis","37":"tag-mce","38":"tag-ncyc","39":"tag-news","40":"tag-publ","41":"tag-res","42":"tag-resf","43":"tag-rfod","44":"tag-rfod1","45":"tag-shopal","46":"tag-stsale","47":"tag-superm","48":"tag-topnws","49":"tag-uk","50":"tag-united-kingdom","51":"tag-unitedkingdom","52":"tag-weu"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}