Supermarket group Sainsbury's reported an encouraging Christmas season today after putting its operations overhaul on hold to focus on festive demand.
The group, which is the middle of an overhaul of its British operation, achieved like-for-like sales growth of 2 per cent in the four weeks to January 3rd.
The performance - stripping out new store openings - is an improvement on the rest of the third quarter trading period when sales were 0.1 per cent ahead.
Sainsbury's said sales in the seven days before Christmas had been strong with 43 stores taking more than £2 million sterling.
The showing from the Britain's third-largest supermarket chain comes after similar positive comments from rivals Asda and Morrisons about Christmas trading. Tesco is due to update the market tomorrow.
Chief executive Sir Peter Davis said he hoped the company's business transformation programme - involving systems changes, new automated distribution centres and the introduction of non-food ranges - would be done by the summer.