Trading Statement

Sainsbury(J) PLC
13 January 2003





13 January 2003


Third Quarter Trading Statement - Significant progress on business
transformation programme, with solid Christmas trading

J Sainsbury plc, the UK and US food retailer, today issued its third quarter
trading statement for the 12 weeks to 4th January 2003, confirming that it is
delivering on its promised transformation programmes at the half way stage.

Sainsbury's Supermarkets (UK)

  • Total sales up 4%
  • Like-for-like sales up 2.8% (excluding petrol up 1%)

Transformation programme on track

  • 104 stores and 25 petrol stations upgraded with new IT systems
  • Distribution strategy on track with the proportion of goods delivered from
    new distribution centres increasing to 60% by March 2004 (currently 20%)
  • delivering on enhanced £700m cost savings programme

Continued progress on store development

  • 6 new stores opened, 8 stores refurbished and 13 stores extended in the
    quarter, bringing total for the year to date to 20 new stores, 20
    extensions, and 36 refurbishments

Shaw's Supermarkets(US)

  • Total sales up 1.2%
  • Like-for-like sales up 0.6%
  • Good performance compared with peer group of US food retailers

Sir Peter Davis, group chief executive, said:

'We have had a solid Christmas trading period, set against a strong performance
last year. This was achieved in an extremely competitive environment and while
making significant progress on our business transformation programme.

'Both the quarter and the year to date have seen major achievements in our
radical programme to make Sainsbury's more effective and efficient. We have
refurbished, extended and opened 76 stores so far this year. In the lead up to
Christmas we successfully commenced operations from Hams Hall our new
distribution centre, which helped with volumes at the peak Christmas time and
demonstrated the scope and capacity of the centres when they are fully
operational. By Christmas we had successfully installed new IT systems in 104
stores and 25 petrol stations. In addition we introduced the Nectar loyalty card
programme in September, which has over 11m active users. We terminated our
Reward Card in November and have now consolidated all our customer data, which
tells us that we have more customers in store using Nectar than our old Reward
Card. We are confident that Nectar will drive future sales growth.

'We have achieved our objective of re-establishing ourselves as First for Food
and are now focusing our efforts on developing our non-food offering further. In
November, a specialist team, created to build an authoritative non-food offer,
started work and we will roll this out to customers towards the end of this
year.

'Shaw's performed well in a soft market. We remodelled two stores, expanded one
and closed two for replacement. Shaw's has been one of the strongest performers
in the US food retail sector with a clear customer proposition in an attractive
geographic area.

'We remain confident that we are making real progress across the group to
achieve our targets on sales and profit margins. Our comprehensive
infrastructure programme is on track, and we are achieving our planned cost
savings.

We will be issuing our pre-close period statement at the end of March.'

For enquiries:

Investor Relations:

Roger Matthews
Lynda Ashton               020 7695 7162

Media:

Jan Shawe
Pip Wood                   020 7695 6127


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