After a strong Christmas period, Sainsbury’s will be raising profit forecast for the year to April.

Strong grocery sales from people staying at home meant the group is now expecting pre-tax profits of at least £720m in the year to March 2022.

“We were bold in our plan for product, value, innovation and service and delivered volume growth ahead of the market. We delivered our best value food this Christmas, launched our lowest ever priced Christmas dinner heading into the key Christmas shopping week and we had our biggest ever New Year,” said chief executive Simon Roberts.

“Customers also treated themselves and new Taste the Difference products in party food, desserts, wines and spirits were really popular and we had record sales of champagne and sparkling wines. Offering great value will be more important than ever this year and we have just launched our bold new Sainsbury’s Quality Aldi Price Match campaign, which targets 150 fresh products that customers buy most often.”

Zoe Gillespie, investment manager at Brewin Dolphin, commented: “UK supermarkets faced tough comparisons against Christmas 2020, when lockdown caused a boom in food and drink sales, but the spread of the Omicron variant saw consumers stay away from bars and restaurants last year as well. Sainsbury’s is continuing to deliver strong results on the back of the range of measures it took to improve business performance.”

“Encouragingly, profit guidance has been lifted, cost savings are helping to stave off the effects of increased inflation, and debt reduction is ahead of schedule. Even the supermarket’s banking operation is seeing a turnaround in fortunes. Sainsbury’s is in a good position and that is being reflected in its increased market share and a share price that is up more than 50% since the very beginning of the pandemic – although, it is still off recent peaks.”

Following the report, shares in the group jumped 2% and analysts pointed to the increase in their market share as reason to be optimistic.

“Sainsbury’s is the latest supermarket directly trying to take on the discounters, with massive investment in reducing prices helping the supermarket up its market share,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Darktrace shares jumped 20% after the group raised its full-year outlook for revenue and earnings margin.

Thanks to a growth in customers by almost 40%, the group now expects year-over-year revenue growth of between 42% and 44% – which is an increase of 5%.

“I am very pleased that we have continued to deliver strong growth across our customer base, ARR and revenue in 1H FY 2022,” said Cathy Graham, the group’s chief finance officer.

“We also achieved our aim of driving improvement in churn and net ARR retention rates over the past six months by leveraging our customer success team and focusing on upsell programmes,” she added.

The group expects revenues for the year to hit 190m (£140m).

Recruitment firm Robert Walters has reported a boost in activity as firms are hiring more staff.

The group reported a record December fee income was up by 33% in the last quarter of the year.

“We are seeing candidate shortages across all locations and disciplines, a fierce competition for talent and wage inflation kicking in which together create huge opportunities across the recruitment market,” said chief executive Robert Walters.

Over the year as a whole, the net income fee was up 21%.

Robert Walters noted strong growth in Asia Pacific as it reported a 56% rise in net fee income.

In December, Heathrow had 600,000 people cancel travel plans over Omicron.

Through the whole year, Heathrow only saw 19.4 million passengers going though the airport – this is compared to the 80 million it had in 2019.

CEO John Holland-Kaye commented: “There are currently travel restrictions, such as testing, on all Heathrow routes – the aviation industry will only fully recover when these are all lifted and there is no risk that they will be reimposed at short notice, a situation which is likely to be years away.

“While this creates enormous uncertainty for the CAA in setting a new 5-year regulatory settlement, it means the regulator must focus on an outcome that improves service, incentivises growth and maintains affordable private financing.”

Also commented on the new data from Heathrow, Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Mass vaccination programmes failed to have the desired effect in 2021, in bringing the rebound in travel there had been such high hopes for this time last year.

“The web of rules and regulations which was spun across different countries and regions and swept away, and then spun again as new variants emerged, clearly led to a drop in confidence in the travelling public. The threat of expensive hotel quarantines following a rapid rule change and the risk of being left stranded overseas if testing positive were hardly a relaxing prospect for holidaymakers wanting to get away from it all.”