Asda has returned to growth for the first time in over two years.
Total till sales grew 1% during the four weeks to 12 July, according to unpublished Worldpanel data seen by The Grocer. It marked a reverse of the 1.3% fall in sales over the previous four-week period to 14 June.
It is the first time Asda has posted positive returns since Q1 2024, marking an end to more than two years of consecutive sales decline, during which time the Leeds grocer’s market share has slipped from 13.8% to 11.5%.
Allan Leighton’s Rollback and Asda Price strategy has rebuilt Asda’s price advantage over its traditional ‘big four’ rivals, but has largely failed to bring shoppers back to stores.
The turnaround has been further hampered by the disastrous final stage of Asda’s Project Future IT decoupling from Walmart in August, which Leighton admitted had set his plan back by at least six months.
The Leeds supermarket launched a major customer experience drive in June, including a reset of its core fresh and frozen categories, aimed at encouraging shoppers to take a ‘Fresh Look’ at its stores.
It’s also increasingly beginning to move away from Leighton’s everyday low pricing strategy, and was the biggest supermarket for multibuys in June, analysis by The Grocer showed earlier this month.
Asda declined to comment on the figures seen by The Grocer.
Signs Asda turnaround is slowly working
While Asda remained the only supermarket to lose sales in July, Worldpanel’s latest public data suggested that the Asda ship was beginning to turn. The rate of sales fall slowed dramatically from 3.6% to 1.1% during the 12 weeks to 12 July.
The four-week market share data is different to the 12-week data published by Worldpanel, and is shared privately with Worldpanel clients, including supermarkets.
Despite the obvious “signs of improvement”, Asda remained the slowest growing of its big four rivals over the four-week period according to the data, which also showed that food inflation unexpectedly fell by 13.3% to 2.6%.
Sainsbury’s sales grew to 4.6%. Morrisons enjoyed sales growth of 4.3%. Tesco fared marginally worse, with sales growing 2.5%.
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