British supermarket chain Tesco has performed very well over the past quarter, publishing its largest sales growth in seven years’ time. It outshone analysts’ expectations by 0.4 %.
Lower price hikes attract more customers
The largest British supermarket chain has been trying to recover from the accounting scandal and is well on its way to do so. Thanks to a different price strategy than its competitors, it has now posted the best quarter in the past seven years. While a food price inflation – caused by Brexit – prompted supermarket chains to increase prices, Tesco decided to keep its price increases lower than the competition. This strategy has helped draw in additional customers and a 2.3 % like-for-like turnover increase for the quarter. This trumped analysts’ expectations, which stood at 1.9 %.
CEO David Lewis was very proud of the company’s achievement: “In the UK, we are entering our third year of positive food volume growth. Fresh food volumes grew by 1.6% in the quarter, underpinned by further improvements across our customer offer.” The company will continue to simplify its business, centered around a core retail offer, in order to achieve “sustainable, profitable sales growth”.
