Tesco posts bumper festive sales

The grocer, the UK’s largest by market share, said like-for-like sales excluding fuel in the UK and Ireland jumped by 7.8% in the six weeks to 7 January and by 7.2% in the UK.

Across the 19 weeks to 7 January - which includes the third quarter - UK sales jumped 5.3%, while group sales rose 6.4%.

Tesco said Christmas trading had been driven by a "focus on value and quality". There was particularly strong demand for fresh food - up 8.1% - while its Aldi Price Match boosted its value proposition.

Ken Murphy, chief executive, said: "I’m really pleased with our performance over this period, particularly further strong growth at Christmas on top of exceptional growth of the last few years.

"We go into the new year with good momentum and I am confident we can continued to maintain our competitiveness and deliver a strong performance relative to the market, despite the challenging conditions ahead."

Looking to the full year, Tesco - which has a market share of 27.5% - reconfirmed guidance for retail adjusted operating profits of between £2.4bn and £2.5bn and retail free cash flow of at least £1.8bn.