Morrisons, Britain's fourth biggest supermarket operator, beat forecasts for first-quarter underlying sales growth helped by an expansion of its wholesale business.
The company also said today that its expectations for the 2018-19 year were unchanged.
Its trading statement made no reference to last week's £7.3 billion bid by the industry's second biggest player Sainsbury's for the third biggest operater Walmart's Asda.
This deal would see the companies overtake market leader Tesco.
Morrisons said today that group like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, rose 3.6% in the 13 weeks to May 6, its fiscal first quarter.
That compared to analysts' average forecast of 2.8% and marked a tenth quarter of growth in a row, following growth of 2.8% in the previous quarter.
Morrisons said like-for-like sales increased 1.8% in both its retail and wholesale operations.
Sainsbury's merging with Asda would be a major challenge for Morrisons. While Morrisons would be number three in the industry, it would be about a third of the size of Sainsbury's-Asda and Tesco.
However, analysts say Morrisons would be well positioned to acquire stores if the competition regulator clears Sainsbury's-Asda on the condition of significant store disposals.
They say Morrisons could also benefit from the distraction of the deal to Sainsbury's and Asda's operations in the time before it completes.
Some analysts have said Morrisons could even consider a bid for Sainsbury's.
Before today's update, analysts were on average forecasting a 2018-19 underlying pretax profit of £400m, up from £374m in 2017-18.
