{"id":46702,"date":"2026-07-01T13:10:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/46702\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T13:10:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:10:36","slug":"sainsburys-backed-by-ubs-and-deutsche-after-mixed-first-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/46702\/","title":{"rendered":"Sainsbury’s backed by UBS and Deutsche after mixed first quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sainsbury's<\/a> Sainsbury’s backed by UBS and Deutsche after mixed first quarter Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n

J Sainsbury PLC’s (LSE:SBRY)<\/a>\u00a0first-quarter update gave analysts enough evidence to stick with buy ratings, as grocery sales beat forecasts and Argos traded better than expected. <\/p>\n

The supermarket group reported retail like-for-like sales growth of 2.1%<\/a>, excluding fuel, ahead of the City consensus forecast of 1.9%. <\/p>\n

Grocery sales rose 3.6%, beating consensus of 3.4%, as Sainsbury’s continued to gain market share and grow volumes. <\/p>\n

UBS said the performance was stronger than many investors had expected, with buy-side forecasts generally in a 3-3.5% range. <\/p>\n

Online grocery sales rose 12.5%, Taste the Difference sales grew 6% and fresh food sales were up 5%. The group also launched more than 380 new products during the quarter, around half under the Taste the Difference range. <\/p>\n

Argos was also better than expected. Sales fell 0.5%, against consensus for a 2.6% decline and a Deutsche Bank forecast for a 3.5% fall. Volumes rose 2.2%, but this was offset by lower average selling prices. <\/p>\n

General merchandise and clothing remained weaker, with sales down 3.7%, hit by tough comparatives and ongoing space reallocation. <\/p>\n

Deutsche Bank said weaker GM and clothing was “likely weighed by ongoing space reallocation”.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Sainsbury’s reiterated guidance for underlying operating profit of \u00a3975 million to \u00a31.075 billion and retail free cash flow of more than \u00a3500 million. <\/p>\n

UBS kept its buy rating and 395p target price, saying: “Overall, a good start to the second most important quarter in the year, well underpins the guidance. <\/p>\n

“Continued strong trading momentum in a rational market could drive upside to the profit outlook.” <\/p>\n

Deutsche Bank\u00a0called the update “a robust print against fairly subdued 1Q expectations” and noting that\u00a0Sainsbury’s continues to gain market share in grocery. <\/p>\n

While sales saw a slowdown from the preceding quarter, this reflects “various moving parts” in the year-on-year comparisons, i.e.\u00a0food disinflation, weather, and cyber disruption at M&S. <\/p>\n

Deutsche\u00a0expects the warm weather into the second quarter will be “supportive for seasonal sales” and, with the stock trading on 13.7 this year’s forecast earnings and a 7.8% free cash flow yield, kept its ‘buy’ rating in place. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sainsbury’s backed by UBS and Deutsche after mixed first quarter Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock J Sainsbury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21213],"tags":[21239,21214,39449,39448,39447,39450],"class_list":["post-46702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-deutsche-bank","tag-deutsche","tag-deutsche-bank","tag-grocery-sales","tag-j-sainsbury","tag-sainsbury39s","tag-supermarket-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}