Ocado Group PLC (LSE:OCDO), Tesco PLC (LSE:TSCO) and J Sainsbury PLC (LSE:SBRY) all outgrew the wider grocery market as supermarkets enjoyed their best month of the year.
Over the four weeks to 3 November, take-home sales at the grocers increased 2.3% to £11.6 billion over the four weeks to 3 November – the biggest sales period of the year so far.
Ocado sales grew 9.5% over the 12 weeks to 3 November, with Lidl's 7.4% the fastest among bricks-and-mortar grocers for the 15th period in a row.
Tesco saw sales increase for all its store formats and online, rising by a total of 4.6% to give it a 27.9% market share, up 0.6 percentage points from a year ago.
Sainsbury’s saw a 4.4% increase in till takings and an overall share of 15.5%, up from 15.2% a year ago as it benefitted from a rise in both shopper numbers and shopping trips in the period.
Asda's market share dropped to 12.5% from 13.5% as sales shrank 5.5%, while Morrison’s sales outpaced the market average for the first time since June 2021 with growth of 2.4%.
October saw a jump in the number of shopping trips made by households, hitting a four-year high at 480 million.
Kantar's Fraser McKevitt said: “October 2024 was the busiest month for the supermarkets since March 2020, when people were preparing for the first national lockdown.
"Trip numbers have been going up gradually for some time, but this steady march hasn’t reached pre-covid levels of shopping frequency just yet. The average for each household is slightly over four trips per week."
He said the number of households already stocking up the cupboards for the big day in December, with 648,000 shoppers having already bought a Christmas cake and 14.4% of households picked up mince pies in October.
"With Black Friday on the horizon, the grocers will be hoping to capture a slice of the action there too," with last year's online and offline sales for typical Black Friday categories across all high street retailers were £1.6 billion higher than during an average week that year.
Grocery price inflation was 2.3% this period, up slightly on September’s figure but with strong promotional activity by the grocers, for branded goods in particular.
Spending on deals has been going up consistently for the past 18 months and made up 28.6% of all sales in the most recent period.