TSCDY Tesco PLC (PK)

By Tapan Panchal

LONDON--Wm. Morrison Supermarkets PLC (MRW.LN) said it had its best Christmas trading period in seven years in December, setting the British company up for better-than-expected earnings in its current fiscal year.

The U.K.'s fourth biggest supermarket chain said like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, for the nine weeks to Jan. 1 were up 2.9% compared with the same period a year earlier. Total sales, excluding fuel, were up 2.0%.

Morrisons, which is the first British supermarket operator to report its trading performance after the key Christmas period, said it now expects fiscal 2017 underlying pretax profit to be ahead of consensus and in the range of 330 million pounds ($402.48 million) to GBP340 million.

The market consensus for fiscal-year underlying pretax profit is GBP326 million, according to the company. In the year to Jan. 31, 2016, the company recorded underlying pretax profit of GBP242 million.

Rival supermarket chain J Sainsbury PLC (SBRY.LN) is scheduled to report its trading performance Wednesday and the country's biggest grocer Tesco PLC (TSCO.LN) slated to report on Thursday.

Write to Tapan Panchal at tapan.panchal@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 10, 2017 02:39 ET (07:39 GMT)

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