3 ways Morrisons will change your supermarket March 13, 2014 Morrisons’ extensive and rapid loss last year, and its foreseeable future profit warning, perhaps put it ahead of other supermarkets in terms of how quickly it needs to change. But the changes it needs and is planning to make affect all mainstream supermarkets. Indeed, the shares of all of them have lost this morning on [...]
Supermarkets are getting crushed March 13, 2014 Morrisons has plummeted into the red, announcing a £176m pre-tax profit loss, having made a £897m profit a year earlier. The supermarket’s planning a £1bn property selloff over the next three years, in a bid to ameliorate the situation. It’s issued a dire profit warning, too, which has been described this morning on the BBC [...]
Ocado’s growth slows but first profit is in sight March 12, 2014 ONLINE grocer Ocado yesterday said it was on course to report its first ever annual profit this year after strong first quarter sales. Retail sales rose 18 per cent to £218m in the 12 weeks to 23 February. However, this was below what analysts were expecting and a slowdown on the 20.1 per cent growth [...]
Clarke admits Tesco must fix image problem March 12, 2014 TESCO boss Philip Clarke admitted yesterday that the grocer and the retail industry had an “image problem” but said he was “determined to provoke a reappraisal” of Britain’s biggest supermarket. Speaking at the Retail Week Live conference, he played down a fall in its market share revealed by Kantar, arguing the industry was going through [...]
Philip Clarke: Retail’s got an image problem but Tesco will win March 12, 2014 Tesco boss Philip Clarke has been talking this morning at Retail Week Live about retail’s "image problem". The chief executive of the UK’s largest supermarket said it has to accept that bigger is no longer seen as better by the customer, and that means it has to embrace change, dealing with pain in the short [...]
Discount stores feast on Tesco’s market share March 12, 2014 TESCO’S market share has fallen to its lowest level in almost 10 years as the supermarket and its mid-market peers lose ground to hard discounters Aldi and Lidl. Britain’s biggest supermarket, which announced plans earlier this month to win back shoppers by cutting prices, saw its market share decline to 28.7 per cent in the [...]
Discount stores feast on Tesco’s market share March 11, 2014 TESCO’S market share has fallen to its lowest level in almost 10 years as the supermarket and its mid-market peers lose ground to hard discounters Aldi and Lidl. Britain’s biggest supermarket, which announced plans earlier this month to win back shoppers by cutting prices, saw its market share decline to 28.7 per cent in the [...]
Here’s why the UK’s food sector has a rocky road ahead March 11, 2014 With some dire Christmas sales, heavy discounting and a ramping up of online shopping, the UK food retail sector feels unloved. That’s according to Barclays, which points out that the UK’s sector is now trading at a clear price-to-earnings discount when compared with continental Europe. It hasn’t always been like this for UK companies. Expansion [...]
Asda and Tesco kick off latest fuel price war March 10, 2014 SUPERMARKET chain Tesco kicked off another fuel price war yesterday, swiftly followed by Asda, following a decline in the wholesale cost of petrol and diesel despite escalating political unrest in Ukraine. Tesco cut the price of its petrol and diesel by one pence per litre (ppl) from yesterday afternoon. Asda is lowering its diesel by [...]
Letters to the Editor – 11/03 – Tax reform, Best of Twitter March 10, 2014 Tax reform [Re: Stop acquisitive politicians forever with a max tax guarantee, Thursday] I wish I thought a max tax would work, but it would likely be far worse than useless, and open the way for a British alternative minimum tax. Recall the political grandstanding that accompanied the withdrawal of allowances from higher-earning income taxpayers, [...]