The retailer said yesterday that like-for-like sales rose by 0.9pc in the 14 weeks to January 5, significantly behind the 1.7pc growth reported in the first half of its financial year.



This is the worst performance by Sainsbury’s in terms of like-for-like sales excluding fuel since it reported a 1.2pc fall in the 12 weeks to January 2005. Since then, it has delivered 32 consecutive quarters of like-for-like sales growth and emerged as one of the retail winners of the recession.