Take that, Aldi: Tesco gains market share for the first time in years but Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Asda decline further
It looks like Tesco is beginning to win the battle of the supermarkets, after new figures showed it won supermarket share in the last three months – for the first time in five years.
Figures by Kantar Worldpanel showed Tesco increased sales by 1.3 per cent in the 12 weeks to 9 October, which pushed its share of the market up to 28.2 per cent – its first year-on-year increase since 2011. Looks like Marmitegate hasn't hurt it too badly, then…
Iceland, the Co-op and Waitrose all followed suit, with sales increasing 6.9 per cent, 3.1 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively.
Predictably, Aldi and Lidl continued to gobble up market share, with sales leaping 11.4 per cent and 8.4 per cent respectively.
But there were also losers, with sales at Asda (whose owner Walmart has said profits will be flat next year) falling 5.2 per cent, while sales at Morrisons fell three per cent and sales at Sainsbury's fell 0.4 per cent. That's despite Morrisons reporting pretty encouraging figures last month.
And considering Kantar's figures also showed grocery price inflation was at -0.8 per cent during the period, any increase in sales is pretty good going.
“While the threat of rising prices is on a lot of minds at the moment, we’ve seen the 27th consecutive period of grocery price deflation, albeit at a slower rate," said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel.
The news sent Tesco's share price up 1.8 per cent to 204.9p in early trading, while Sainsbury's rose 1.1 per cent to 231.8p. Meanwhile, Morrisons' shares fell 0.5 per cent to 220.3p.