Woolworths celebrates festive win over Coles

WOOLWORTHS has triumphed over Coles for the third Christmas in a row, investment bank Morgan Stanley says.

Woolworths grew like-forlike sales by 3 per cent during the busy Christmas trading period while Coles could only manage a 2 per cent rise, an analysis by Morgan Stanley has found.

Like-for-like sales is a closely watched industry metric which strips out the impact of stores opening or closing.

The investment bank also said non-food retailers suffered a weak Christmas trading period, with foot traffic down significantly in December.

“Falling house prices, a greater focus on Black Friday driving discounting and weaker equity markets all look to have held the Australian consumer back this Christmas,” it said in a note to clients. Foot traffic was down and the drop could not only be explained by consumers browsing online and then transacting instore, it said.

The latest retail update come ahead of the release of National Australia Bank’s cashless sales report for December which is due out later this month.

Morgan Stanley said total retail sales grew by 0.4 per cent in November – higher than what most analysts had been expecting but down on the prior year when growth clocked in at 1.2 per cent.

“This could suggest less pull forward of demand from Christmas sales this year, or that overall sales growth over the last two months of the year was weaker,” the bank said.

New vehicle sales in December fell 14.9 per cent in the largest drop since the global financial crisis, it said.