Swedish retailer ICA has seen its sales for the month of August rise by 3.4% compared to the same month the previous year. Sales in like-for-like stores increased by 2.6%.
For the month of August, sales in the Swedish ICA stores totalled SEK 9,856 million excluding VAT, which is an increase of 3.4% compared with the same month in the previous year. Sales in the period from January-August 2017 amounted to SEK 75,834 million, an increase of 2.6% compared with the previous year.
ICA Gruppen estimates the calendar effect for August to be +0.5%.
Sequential Deceleration
Commenting on its performance, however, Barclays European Food Retail Equity Research said that ICA showed 'a sequential deceleration at almost all banners after excluding the negative calendar impact'.
It noted that LFL sales ex. calendar 'slightly decelerated sequentially at three out of the four ICA banners in Sweden, including the Maxi ICA Stormarknad hypermarkets (+3.1% in August vs +3.4% in July), ICA Kvantum supermarkets (+0.9% vs +2.0% the month before) and ICA supermarket (+2.0% vs +2.5% in July). Only ICA Nära convenience stores showed a muted sequential improvement (+2.3% vs +1.7% the month before).'
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
