Tesco scoops festive crown in flat season

TESCO is set to be crowned Christmas winner this week, with City analysts tipping Morrisons as the laggard among the supermarket Big Four.

However, Clive Black, Shore Capital head of research, said Tesco, along with Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons were likely to report flat to negative sales when they unveil their Christmas trading updates this week.

He said weak consumer confidence, poor footfall and disruption caused by the General Election would have caused any disappointing figures.

Black said Tesco is likely to have performed the strongest partly because its large-format Extra stores being convenient for High Street Christmas shopping. Morrisons is likely to disappoint because it has already warned that sales slowed during the autumn, he said.

“Of the big four, we expect Tesco to be robust, while there will not be much between Asda and Sainsbury’s. Morrisons will probably be weak,” Black said. “I’d be surprised if any report positive sales, they’ll probably be flat or slightly down.”

Discounters Aldi and Lidl were the biggest winners of the supermarket price war during the 2010s, according to data from Kantarworldpanel.

Aldi’s market share has grown from 2 to 8 per cent, while Lidl has gone from 2.1 to 6.1 per cent.

Tesco saw the biggest market share decline, down 3.5 percentage points to 27.3 per cent. Asda and Morrisons both experienced 2.6 point falls, leaving them with 14.6 and 10.1 per cent of the market respectively.

Sainsbury’s market share fell by just 0.8 points to 15.7 per cent.