Swedish retailer ICA Gruppen saw its sales rise by 3.4% in June, according to an update posted by the retailer recently. Like-for-like sales were up 2.6%.
In the month of June, sales across the Swedish ICA stores totalled SEK 10.09 billion (€1.05 billion) excluding VAT, which is an increase of 3.4% on the same month in the previous year.
In the period from January to June, sales were SEK 55.95 billion (€5.82 billion), which is 2.6% higher than the same period last year.
ICA Gruppen said that it estimates the calendar effect for June to be +1.4%.
As of 30 June 2017, the number of ICA stores in Sweden was 1,291.
Sequential Deceleration
Commenting on the figures, Barclays European Food Retail Equity Research said, "ICA reported its June sales, showing a sequential deceleration at all banners after taking into account the positive calendar impact.
"LFL sales ex. calendar deteriorated sequentially at all ICA banners, including the Maxi ICA Stormarknad hypermarkets (+2.3% in June vs +3.3% in May), ICA Kvantum supermarkets (+1.6% vs +2.3% the month before), ICA supermarket (+0.3% vs +2.3% in May) and ICA Nära convenience stores (+0.2% vs +1.2% 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.
