UK's M&S Christmas food sales growth topped only by Lidl

Marks and Spencer

09/01/2024 08:00

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      M&S food sales up 12.1% year-on-year in 12 weeks to Dec 30
-NIQ
    

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      Almost 29% of UK households shopped at M&S in Dec -NIQ
    

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      UK grocery sales up 4.3% in week to Dec. 28 -NIQ
    

  
    By James Davey
       LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Apart from German-owned
discounter Lidl GB, Marks & Spencer  MKS.L  was Britain's
fastest growing supermarket in the Christmas quarter, industry
data published on Tuesday showed.
    Researcher NIQ said M&S's food sales on a value basis rose
12.1% in the 12 weeks to Dec. 30 year-on-year, with its share of
the UK grocery market rising 0.1 percentage point to 3.8%.
    Almost 29% of households shopped at M&S in December, up from
27% in the same period last year, equating to 500,000 new
shoppers, it said.
    M&S's food shopper numbers always jump at Christmas. Its
challenge is to retain them for the rest of the year.
    The group, which also sells clothing and homewares, will
update on Christmas trading on Thursday.
    NIQ said Lidl GB's sales over the 12 week period rose 15.3%,
while fellow discounter Aldi UK's sales were up 11.4%,
increasing their combined market share to 20.1%.
    Echoing data from rival market researcher Kantar last week,
NIQ said market leader Tesco  TSCO.L  and No. 2 Sainsbury's
 SBRY.L  also performed robustly with sales up 7.4% and 8.7%
respectively, but privately owned Asda and Morrisons were
laggards with growth of 3.2%. Kantar's monthly report does not
include M&S.
    Tesco will also update on Christmas trading on Thursday, a
day after Sainsbury's.
    NIQ said total supermarket sales in cash terms reached 4.8
billion pounds ($6.1 billion) during the week ending Dec. 23,
the biggest week on record and an increase of 4.3% on Christmas
2022. Sales on a volume basis rose 1.2%.
    The researcher said confectionery was the highest performing
category in December with 17.3% value growth but value sales for
beers, wines and spirits slowed to 1.6% with volumes down.
    Separately on Tuesday, data from the British Retail
Consortium showed lacklustre overall UK retail sales around
Christmas, which may add to concerns that the economy has tipped
into a mild recession, less than a year before a likely national
election.
($1 = 0.7841 pounds)

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FOCUS-Not just for Christmas: Britain's M&S targets more regular
food shoppers     urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N3D50CB
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 (Reporting by James Davey, additional reporting by David
Milliken; editing by Barbara Lewis)
 ((james.davey@thomsonreuters.com))