Retail Week looks ahead to the next seven days, with half year results from Dunelm, a pre-close update from DFS and the latest grocery market share data on the agenda.

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Kantar and Nielsen grocery sales

The latest grocery market share data will be revealed on Tuesday when both Kantar and Nielsen publish their figures for January.

Tesco, Morrisons, Aldi and Iceland enjoyed a particularly strong festive season, and would have been aiming to carry momentum into the first month of 2017.

According to Nielsen, the frozen food specialist outgrew the big four in the 12 weeks to December 31, enjoying a 4.7% spike in sales, making it the fastest growing retailer other than Aldi and discount rival Lidl.

Sales in the overall grocery market climbed to their highest level for four years, with Kantar suggesting that an extra £500m was spent in the 12 weeks to January 1, compared to the same period last year.

The homewares business unveils its half year results on Wednesday. Dunelm, which snapped up etail rival Worldstores for £8.5m back in November, has suffered a challenging start to its financial year.

The business posted a 3.8% slump in like-for-like sales during its first quarter, although they edged up 0.2% in the 13 weeks to December 31.

Having drafted in Fiona Lambert – the former boss of Asda’s George – as its new product director in January, warned that the homewares market has “continued to decline”, but remained confident that it would outperform its rivals in the sector.

The business plans to open five new superstores before the end of its current financial year, despite the turbulent trading conditions.

DFS

The furniture stalwart issues a pre-close update on Thursday.

Its boss Ian Filby is confident about the retailer’s position in the “resilient” furniture market, and accelerated its roll-out of Dwell store-in-stores earlier in the financial year.

While Filby claims not to have witnessed any slow down in consumer confidence, warned that “given the impact of the EU referendum result on the US dollar exchange rate, the industry does have a cost inflation challenge to manage this year”.