Russian food retailer O'Key predicted on Wednesday that its 2014 revenue growth would not exceed last year's, adding to evidence of flagging consumer confidence.
Rival Magnit said earlier that its sales growth slowed in December as customers chose to buy cheaper products, while electronics chain M.video saw a weaker performance at regional stores.
"There was no pick-up in the number of items per basket, the number was decreasing," Maksim Kravtsov, O'Key's Head of Investor Relations, said about the December sales, adding that the company was seeing "a very similar trend" in January.
"You cannot call it exactly a trading-down tendency but definitely people were not consuming more," he said on a conference call after the release of the 2013 sales numbers.
O'Key, which has 94 hypermarkets and supermarkets, expects revenues to grow by 15-19 percent this year as it plans to increase the selling space by up to 20 percent. In 2013, sales rose by around 19 percent to 138 billion roubles ($4 billion), compared with its guidance for a 19-22 percent growth.
Like-for-like sales are forecast to grow by 5.5-6.5 percent, a slowdown from 8 percent last year, the company's CEO Patrick Longuet said on the conference call.
