J Sainsbury beats expectations

As the Christmas updates start flooding in, it's more good news for grocers. J Sainsbury (SBRY) beat market expectations to report a 1 per cent rise in underlying sales. A lot of that is down to the like-for-like sales performance from recently acquired Argos, which reported a 4 per cent improvement in sales on that basis. That said, alone Sainsbury's was able to get underlying sales back into positive territory, up 0.1 per cent, compared with a 0.4 per cent decline this time last year.