Sales at Morrisons' stores open for at least year increased by 0.7% for the six week period ending January 1, excluding fuel and VAT, representing a slowdown from the 2.4% rise reported for the previous quarter.
Total in-store sales increased by 2.9% for the period, which also represented a slowdown from the 4.6% announced following the third quarter of the financial year.
Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, described the performance as “disappointing” and blamed strong results from rival Asda as a contributing factor.
Competitively impacted
He said: “We deem such a performance to be disappointing, noting that Nielsen data suggested 4-week sales to Christmas Eve from Morrisons of 5.9%. This flatters the headline figure with the extra day of trading year-on-year.
“We also note that Asda had an especially strong festive period and given the reasonably high level of overlap with Morrisons, it leads us to suggest that it has competitively impacted its Yorkshire-based rival.”
Morrisons described the Christmas period as “challenging” and said that it had delivered sales growth “in line with the market.”
Dalton Philips, chief executive officer at Morrisons said: “I am pleased that in a difficult trading environment we have continued to grow our business and have delivered another good performance in a very tough market.
“At Christmas, when customers are even more focused on great quality food at outstanding value, we really need to serve our customers well. We’ve done that and I thank all our 130,000 colleagues for their outstanding efforts.”