Signs of investor worries about the first quarter trading performance of our two biggest retailers – Woolworths and Coles which are both due to update the market this week on how they went in the three months to the end of September.
Coles releases its first-quarter figures this morning (Tuesday) but yesterday saw a near 3% sell-off after an analyst downgrade.
The shares ended the day at $14.56, down 2.67% and $1.05 under its all-time high of $1561 hit at the start of October.
Coles was downgraded to ‘underperform’ by analyst Grant Saligari at Credit Suisse today with a target price of $13.23.
Analysts expect Coles to report a fall in same-store sales of around 0.4% for the September quarter. That would be the first negative sales return for 12 years.
Rival Woolworths is due to report its first-quarter performance on Wednesday and analysts are forecasting a small gain in same-store sales for the giant.
Woolies shares hit their all-time high of $38.31 on October 15 and the shares have dipped since then to yesterday’s close of $37.80 – a fall of just over 1% against the 6% slide for Coles.
