Super(market) Tuesday

We were kept busy with the supermarkets yesterday, with Asda announcing a rise in fourth quarter sales and profits, Tesco’s new chief executive Phil Clarke being introduced to the press in a series of off-record briefings, and Sainsbury’s launching its Summer ranges with a do on the balcony of the National Theatre.

To take them in turn, some random thoughts:

Asda Andy Clarke seems to have done a good job of steadying the ship at Asda House, and its performance is back in line with the market. I’m pleased for Andy who’s a nice guy and a talented retailer who was handed a bit of a poisoned challice when he took over last year.

We’ll see next week in the Kantar and Nielsen figures whether it is really outperforming its rivals as it claims. Like its rivals, the like-for-like growth Asda is seeing must be coming from inflation rather than volume growth, but Asda’s low price proposition should work in its favour given where consumer confidence is.

I don’t get the Asda Price Guarantee from the point of view that sitting in front of a computer and inputting all the data isn’t likely to appeal to many shoppers, but it is an effective PR tool and Asda is very effective at PR

Sainsbury’s Justin King seemed very relaxed at the Sainsbury’s drinks last night, and didn’t seem too fazed about the Asda recovery.

No reason why he should be, as Sainsbury’s seems to have real momentum at the moment and King - who becomes the elder statesman of the grocery world when Terry Leahy steps down next week - gives the sense that he has a particularly good handle on how consumers are thinking. Sainsbury’s has done a good job of responding to the very anxious consumer mood.

Tesco This is the big one, with Philip Clarke taking over as chief executive next week. It will be interesting to see what changes at Tesco, because although in many respects he is like Leahy (Liverpudlian, quite dry, lifelong Tesco), in many ways he isn’t. He’s more charismatic, more of a trader, and I wouldn’t much like to get the wrong side of him.

Once you piece together his strengths with those of the team he has assembled, it feels like it should work, assuming he can keep it together and keep everyone pulling in the same direction. The additional focus given by appointing Richard Brasher to the new role of UK chief executive will, I suspect, up the ante a bit in the UK, where it hasn’t been on fire for a while.

General I’ve not talked about Morrisons, who are clearly going into overdrive with in-store experimentation, but with the exception of JS, there’s big change ahead at all the major grocers. The key point is that this is all going to be happening against a backdrop of a difficult market, where the only sales growth is going to come from inflation, yet everyone is still putting down loads of space, which can only dilute returns.

I suspect that with the market so ultra-competitive one of the supermarkets will emerge as a major loser this year - what I don’t know is which one