Sainsbury reports robust trading over Christmas J Sainsbury unveiled robust Christmas trading figures on Wednesday that showed an acceleration in its sales growth towards the end of 2011. The UK's third-biggest supermarket chain said like-for-like sales were 2.1 per cent higher in the 14 weeks to January 7 than they were a year earlier, after stripping out petrol sales but not sales tax The performance during this period - the third quarter of its financial year - was an improvement on the 1.9 per cent it had posted over the preceding six months. It was also better than the 1.8 per cent growth expected by analysts, according to a poll of market expectations carried out by Bloomberg. The figures heap fresh pressure on Tesco, the UK grocery market leader, which is due to reveal its own Christmas trading performance on Thursday amid expectations that it lost ground. They also come in the wake of a trading update from Marks and Spencer on Tuesday that showed better than expected food sales. Justin King, chief executive, said customers had been willing to take a break from strict economising to indulge themselves with pricier food at Christmas. Some households had turned to home baking to defuse the cost of the holiday period, he added, while a new range of party clothing bearing the name of Gok Wan, the TV presenter, had also been a success. Mr King expected customers to continue to spend cautiously in 2012, particularly in the early part of the year: "We expect in January and February a battening down of the hatches by customers." However, he suggested that the early 2012 headwinds might not be as fierce as they were at the start of 2011. Like M&S, Sainsbury also played up the commercial opportunities presented by summer events such as the Queen's diamond jubilee and the London Olympics and Paralympics. Sainsbury's like-for-like sales figures exclude new store openings but not store extensions, which accounted for a little under half the 2.1 per cent growth. If VAT, a UK sales tax, had been stripped out then like-for-like sales growth would have fallen to 1.2 per cent. Total third-quarter sales were up 7 per cent year-on-year, meanwhile. The company did not give a formal update to the market on profits during the period, although it said it did not expect the consensus forecast for full-year pre-tax profits to change from £702m. Shares in J Sainsbury rose 1.5p to 307.4p in early morning trading in London on Wednesday.