Is the City missing a trick over Sainsbury’s?

The group is outperforming its privately owned rivals. Private equity will be beating a path to the supermarket chain’s door, argues James Moore

Profits have soared at Sainsbury’s (PA)

Shoppers, said Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts, are “watching every penny”. In the middle of a cost of living crisis, which is permanently in the news, he wins the day’s “statement of the bleedin’ obvious” prize.

Roberts was speaking as Britain’s No 2 supermarket chain by market share delivered a robust set of annual results.

Underlying profits more than doubled against last year. They were also comfortably ahead of where the business was a couple of years ago. The trouble is that, as the company warned, things won’t look quite so rosy in a year’s time.