Christmas sales soar for Marks & Spencer and Tesco

Marks & Spencer and Tesco saw sales soar over Christmas as both retailers forecast strong full-year profits.

M&S said its food business reported its highest-ever revenue for Christmas, while Tesco said it was an "exceptional" festive period for sales.

Tesco now expects annual income to hit the top end of forecasts at £2.6bn.

Meanwhile, M&S said it was "now more confident" of reaching previous expectations of at least £500m in profits for the full-year.

Tesco's chief executive Ken Murphy said that "once again, Covid-19 led to a greater focus on celebrating at home". As a result, Tesco's Christmas sales rose by 0.3% compared to the previous year and were 9.2% higher than the pre-pandemic festive period in 2019.

Earlier this week, Sainsbury's also reported strong Christmas sales with more people choosing to eat at home rather than venture out amid the emergence of the Omicron variant.

M&S - whose Christmas campaign was fronted by its Percy Pig confectionary character - said sales within its food division rose to £1.9bn in the three months to 1 January - a 10% increase on 2020 and up 12.4% on pre-Covid levels.

The retailer said that customers were already using M&S for more of their everyday shopping items and it said "the larger basket sizes we saw in the first half continued through the Christmas period".