Shares in UK supermarkets WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC (LON:MRW) and J Sainsbury PLC (LON:SBRY) headed lower on Wednesday after rival Tesco PLC (LON:TSCO) posted its annual results.
Tesco, the largest grocer in Britain, doubled its dividend following a 28% rise in full-year profits, sending its shares 2.6% higher to 239.9p.
READ: Tesco doubles dividend as annual profits surge
The pay-out bonus, better than many in the City were expecting, perhaps glossed over what looked to some like an iffy end to the year.
In the six months between March and September 2018, Tesco’s core UK supermarket business saw like-for-like sales, which strip out the impact of new and closed stores, grow 2.3%.
But in the following six month-period, like-for-like growth fell to 1.2%.
Booker, the wholesale business it bought for £3.7bn last spring, saw its performance tail off even more sharply.
Like-for-likes in the first half grew 14.7%, but in the second half, that figure fell to 7.6%.
The decline weighed on the share prices of Tesco’s rivals, with investors fearful that Tesco's drop-off was indicative of a wider market deterioration.
Sainsbury was down 1% in mid-afternoon trading to 231.6p, while Morrison fell 1.8% to 218.9p.
‘LFLs aren’t important to me,’ says boss
When asked about the drop-off at the press conference, chief executive Dave Lewis said he doesn’t care much for like-for-like metrics.
“We did very well in the fourth-quarter relative to the market, which is what I’m really interested in rather than like-for-like,” he told journalists.
“We’re really very happy with how the UK business finished the year and if anything, we got stronger in the second half of the year than the first.”
As for what caused the market to slowdown, Lewis cited inflation. It was also highlighted in the results presentation that customers are increasingly looking to buy cheaper items, including Tesco’s own-brand goods.
As for the decline in Booker’s second-half growth, Tesco said: “Sales growth in the fourth quarter eased as we started to annualise contract wins secured in the prior year.”