PACopyright: PA
Pundits had expected J Sainsbury to have the weakest Christmas numbers of the big four grocery chains.
They were right – but for the wrong reasons.
Sainsbury’s core grocery business did quite well given the fierce competition from the mainstream rivals Tesco, Morrison’s and Asda, and the extra squeeze from the German-owned discounters Aldi and Lidl.
The weakness came in so-called general merchandise, which includes Argos, which Sainsbury’s bought two years ago.
The problem, Sainsbury’s said, was not Christmas trading, but Black Friday.
It chose not to follow rivals’ fierce discounting and sales suffered accordingly.
While this explanation is undoubtedly correct, it will not impress investors, who will point out that Argos was meant to provide diversification away from the super-competitive grocery market, and that complaining about discounting on Black Friday is like complaining about cold weather in January.
All this week’s trading updates show only sales. We will not know the real winners – which retailers turned those sales into profits – until later in the year, in Sainsbury’s case the full-year results in May.
Read again Business Live: Mixed festive period for retailers - BBC News : https://bbc.in/2Txtci6Bagikan Berita Ini
Related Posts :
Are gender quotas good for business?- I drove a $44000 Chevy Bolt for a weekend here's how it made me a better driver
- One of China's richest men was arrested in the US on sexual misconduct allegations
- Two Reuters journalists have been sentenced to seven years in prison for obtaining confidential documents in Myanmar
- Countingup the business bank account that combines bookkeeping raises 2.3M seed
0 Response to "Business Live: Mixed festive period for retailers - BBC News"
Post a Comment