Couple of days before ***** reported three months group sales growth of 3.1% and today its the turn of Sainsbury's which posted 5.4% rise in sales. Are all these reported growths genuine or are there any different motives behind them ?

Originally Posted by JacquesMagique

I imagine they are independently audited? They can't just lie to shareholders etc..

Yes, the published accounts of any limited company over a certain size do have to be independently audited, however without knowing exactly what was being compared to what in this case it's not possible to comment. But given the fact that both supermarkets have increased their range of affordable (i.e., cheaper) products, I'm not at all surprised that their sales have grown by a few percent.

I know it's not comparable in the slightest (we're a precision engineering company of 300 employees), but our own interim sales for the last half year have also grown by about 5% compared to this time last year, but a large part of that was down to us making 50 of the least productive people redundant earlier in the year, although export sales have been up slightly too.