Britain’s number four supermarket reported a rise in first-half profit for the first time in four years, suggesting its recovery is gaining momentum.
Advertisement
Morrisons has released its quarterly results and has reported a third consecutive quarter of growth. However, our priorities are unchanged, and we will continue to invest in becoming more competitive and improving the shopping trip for customers.
“But so far, so good, I think our colleagues have played a blinder”.
Morrisons’ strong sales performance comes after it cut prices twice in recent months as it aims to win back customers lost to the cheaper discounters.
Mr Potts has this year inked a new deal with Ocado and signed a landmark agreement with U.S. online giant Amazon to supply fresh food to its customers.
“By overhauling their online offering while still keeping prices low the chain looks like they might just get out of this battle bruised but buoyant”.
The Bradford-based grocery chain made an underlying pre-tax profit before restructuring costs of £157 million, 11% up from past year and ahead of analysts’ average forecast of £150 million.
Potts said that Morrisons’ supermarket business, stripping out the impact of online sales, was positive like-for-like in the second quarter for the first time since 2011-12.
Morrisons’ net debt was reduced by £477 million to £1.27 billion in the first half – below the firm’s year-end target of £1.4-1.5 billion.
Morrisons also raised its targets for cost savings, free cash flow and working capital improvement.
Prior to Thursday’s update analysts were on average forecasting an underlying pretax profit of 313 million pounds for the current year ending in January, up from the 302 million pounds made last year.
The retailer said like-for-like sales also grew by 1.4 per cent during the first half of the year, as it published results for the half year to 31 July 2016.
Advertisement
Finance chief Trevor Strain told reporters he expected “lower outliers” would review their estimate models.
