Tesco sales continue to slide

London - Sales at Britain's Tesco, the market leading grocer reeling from an accountancy scandal, continued to slide over the last 12 weeks, although the firm has at least stemmed the rate of decline, industry data showed on Tuesday.

The data from market researcher Kantar Worldpanel showed Tesco's sales fell 3.6% in the 12 weeks to October 12.

Though that performance was still the worst of Britain's so called "big four" grocers, it was Tesco's best figure since June and compared to a fall of 4.5% reported by Kantar in its September report. Tesco's market share was 28.8% in the latest period, down from 30.1% in the same period last year.

The grocer's shares, which have halved over the last year, were up 2.5% at 09:31 GMT. Tesco is due to publish interim results and an update on its probe into a £250m ($404m) profit mis-statement on Thursday.

Analysts expect the firm to report sales at stores open over a year, excluding fuel and VAT sales tax, down about 6% for its second quarter to August 23. Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis said in a memo to staff last Friday that the firm's recent performance in food "has been one of our strongest for a very long time."

The Kantar data showed overall market growth of 0.7%, with like-for-like prices down 0.2%, pushing the grocery market into deflation.

"Extensive price cutting by some supermarkets in a bid to win the price war means that customers are saving on everyday items such as vegetables and milk," said Fraser McKevitt, Kantar's head of retail and consumer insight. Of the big four, Walmart's Asda was the winner with sales growth of 1.0%.

Sales at Sainsbury's and Morrisons fell 3.1% and 1.8% respectively. Among the discounters Aldi's growth slowed slightly compared to recent months, but its sales were still up 27.3%.