Majestic Wine reports on tough Christmas

Majestic Wine said the Christmas trading season had been challenging with many consumers leaving their shopping until the very last moment.

The wine merchant reported that total UK store sales over the seven weeks of Christmas trading were up 5.1%.

Over the period, which covered November 13th to December 31st, like-for-like sales were up 1.1%.

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This left like-for-like UK store sales growth at 0.8% for the first 39 weeks of the financial year.

These results sparkled rather less than the year before when total sales were up 8.4% and like-for-like sales were up 4% over the Christmas period.