Asda sales fall as customers switch to supermarket rivals – as it happened

And finally, London’s stock market has ended the day in the red, but up from its earlier lows.

The FTSE 100 has closed 22 points lower at 8144 points, down 0.27% today.

At one stage it was as low as 8064 points, a triple-digit drop, before recovering after the latest US jobless claims came in stronger than feared.

Insurance firm Beazley led the risers, up 10.7% after almost doubling its first-half profits to $728.9m this morning.

And that’s all for today. Goodnight! GW

Asda also says its Executive Team has “a clear plan” to deliver a more consistent experience for customers.

It has three key priorities: customer satisfaction, enhanced product availability and a renewed trading plan.

Asda says:

First, the supermarket will increase its focus on, and invest in, enhancing availability across all categories, including 1,000 core grocery lines most important to customers. Asda expects to deliver material efficiencies to make replenishment processes easier, allowing more deliveries to be put straight to shelf.

Second, Asda is investing an additional £30m in colleague hours – to ensure a strengthened customer proposition. This investment will improve the replenishment of stock during opening hours in store; increase the number of colleagues on checkouts at the weekend; and provide a more effective cleaning programme in stores.

Sales have fallen at UK supermarket chain Asda, as customers defect to larger rivals.

Asda, the UK’s third-largest supermarket chain, has reported a 2.1% drop in like-for-like sales in the first half of the financial year.

The decline accelerated in the last quarter, with underlying sales down 5.3% in April-June.

Michael Gleeson, the retailer’s finance chief, says Asda knows it needs to improve.

Gleeson says:

We continue to make progress by investing in bringing our quality and value offering to more customers across the UK, with Asda’s food price inflation trending lower than the market.

“We have made great progress over the last few years in transforming Asda into a diversified retail group, much of which is almost complete.

However, we also know that there are some areas where we can and need to improve. We have today set out clear and decisive action to deliver a more consistent customer experience – to match the uncompromising value we offer. We remain confident in the underlying strength of the Asda business as we execute our long-term growth strategy.”

Data provider Kantar reported last month that Tesco and Sainsbury’s both grew their market share in the 12 weeks to early July, to 27.7% and 15.3% respectively, while Asda held a 12.7% share.

Asda has also reported that its online sales grew over the latest quarter, with a 1.4% rise in online grocery and 3.9% jump in George.com sales.

Mohsin Issa, Asda co-owner, said:

“These results highlight a period of robust online performance and a record start to George’s Back-to-School campaign.

“As we move forward, we remain committed to maintaining our value credentials, enhancing the product offer, and executing our long-term growth strategy to build an even stronger Asda for our customers and communities.”

Asda was bought by the billionaire Issa brothers and their private equity partner TDR Capital in 2021. That takeover added more than £4bn of debt to the company’s books – debt servicing costs have risen due to the increase in interest rates since.

There has been change at the top recently; two months ago, Zuber Issa exited Asda, selling his 22.5% stake to TDR Capital to focus on his petrol forecourts business.

Newsflash: Wall Street has opened higher, as a week of rollercoaster market action continues.

The Dow Jones industrial average is up 215 points, or 0.55%, to 38,978 points at the open.

The broader S&P 500 share index is just over 1% higher, while the tech-focused Nasdaq is 1.4% higher.

The New York stock exchange likes today’s fall in jobless claims!

Wall Street futures have pushed higher, as investors digest the drop in new unemployment claims last week.

The S&P 500 is now expected to jump 0.75% at the open, with Nasdaq futures up 1%.

Michael Brown, senior research strategist at brokerage Pepperstone, says the US jobless claims figures appear to have steadied some market nerves.

Stocks have popped in reaction, as dip buyers emerge for a third straight day, though the rapid nature by which gains fizzled out yesterday may be some cause for concern, particularly with the S&P remaining below its 100-day moving average.

Nevertheless, the rather sizeable equity, and Treasury, reaction to what is usually a glossed-over data release speaks to how the market continues to hang on the ‘growth scare’ narrative, with next week’s retail sales print the next jigsaw piece in further allaying concerns over an imminent US economic slowdown, which were sparked by last week’s poorer-than-expected labour market report.

Newsflash: the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment support has dropped, which may calm fears of an imminent US recession.

There were 233,000 fresh ‘initial claims’ for unemployment support last week – a proxy for the number of workers laid off.

That’s down on the previous seven days, when there were 250,000 initial claims, close to a one-year high.

Encouragingly, that’s also lower than feared – as economists had predicted 240,000 initial claims for last week.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US, says this suggests the US jobs market is fairly healthy:

In the travel sector, British Airways is to halt flights to the Chinese capital.

BA says it will pause its route to Beijing from 26 October, but continue daily flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong.

It’s a surprise, as BA had only resumed flights to Beijing in June 2023, four times a week, after pausing early in the Covid-19 pandemic.

British Airways first flew to China in 1980, and last year described Beijing and Shanghai as “important routes”.