J. Sainsbury - Q4 Trading Statement for 12 Weeks to 22 March 2008

26 March 2008

• Total sales for fourth quarter up 6.7 per cent (5.1 per cent excluding fuel)
• Like-for-like sales for fourth quarter up 6.0 per cent (4.1 per cent excluding fuel)
• 13 consecutive quarters of like-for-like sales growth
• Sales targets achieved: £2.7bn of sales growth delivered against £2.5bn target

Justin King, chief executive, said: "We've delivered another good performance in the final quarter of the year with like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, up 4.1 per cent. Full year like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, grew by 3.9 per cent continuing our momentum of sales growth over three years. As announced in January 2008, we achieved our Making Sainsbury's Great Again (MSGA) sales growth target early in this quarter, three months ahead of plan. We've continued to grow and have now delivered £2.7 billion of sales growth since March 2005. This is an outstanding success and I would like to thank and congratulate all 150,000 Sainsbury's colleagues for the part they played in achieving this.

"The fourth quarter contained a number of seasonal events as well as our own initiatives and we were pleased with our operational performance which helped us deliver good growth during these periods. We again delivered strong customer service and product availability as a result of the improvements we've made to our operation over the past three years.

"We are passionate about the quality and value of our food and provide a broad offer to over 16.5 million customers a week, whatever their household budget. Consumers are facing real increases in their cost of living. Today we have launched our ‘Feed your family for a fiver' campaign which provides customers with a range of healthy, fresh and tasty meal ideas for four people for £5 or under. During the quarter we supported the Fairtrade fortnight with specific promotions in all of our stores. Our range of Fairtrade products continues to grow, and we've more than doubled our Fairtrade sales over the last 12 months.

"We also continue to play a very active role in the communities in which we operate. In February we launched our fourth Sainsbury's Active Kids programme, where vouchers are collected against spend in store and then exchanged for an increasingly wide range of rewards, such as donating sports equipment to schools in developing countries. Since 2005 we have donated £52 million of sports and cooking equipment to schools, nurseries, scout and guide groups. We were also proud to sponsor the Sainsbury's Sport Relief Mile on March 16 as part of our longstanding relationship with Comic Relief. Our colleagues and customers helped us contribute over £1.5 million to this charity.

"We continue to see strong growth from non-food sales following the investment we've made in developing the range, establishing the supporting infrastructure and increasing the space dedicated to this part of our offer. Going forward, non-food has significant growth potential as we continue to implement our plans.

"During the quarter we opened a new store in Alnwick, extended our store at Bradford on Avon and refurbished a further 13 supermarkets. Within the convenience estate we opened eight new stores. We have identified 36 former Bells and Jackson's stores unsuitable for conversion to the Sainsbury's fascia and a sale process has commenced. This is expected to be completed early in 2008/09.

"Today we have also announced the investment of £273 million to create a £1.2 billion property Joint Venture (‘JV') with British Land. This allows Sainsbury's shareholders to share in the significant value creation arising from the development opportunities across 38 Sainsbury's stores owned by the JV. 

"The achievements we've made during our MSGA plan are significant and I am delighted with our progress. The market remains competitive but, as we enter our fourth year of growth, the improvements we have made to date position us well to meet the demands of what continues to be a challenging environment."

* Total statutory sales growth for the full year is 5.8 per cent including fuel (5.7 per cent excluding fuel).

1. Store investment for the year: