Morrisons hails continued sales momentum
Morrisons has posted an increase in second quarter sales as it works towards building a “broader, stronger” business.
In the 13 weeks to 30 April, the supermarket’s total sales, excluding fuel, rose by 3.1% to £3.7 billion while like-for-like sales edged up 1%.
However, group revenue fell by 0.9% to £4.5 billion due to lower fuel sales year-on-year. Underlying first half EBITDA was also down, falling by 10.7% to £394 million, as a result of continuing inflationary pressures and the supermarket’s investment in price.
David Potts, chief executive of Morrisons, said: “Although we are still in the foothills of our new journey, we are making good progress in our plans to develop a broader, stronger Morrisons built on traditional values with modern methods.
“The momentum we reported in the first quarter has continued with further progress in our like-for-like sales and in our price competitiveness. We also saw significant improvements in the key measures of customer satisfaction, availability and value for money.”
During the period, the supermarket opened a further 107 Morrisons Daily convenience stores to take the total to almost 650, of which around 400 are former McColl’s stores. By the year end, Morrisons expects to have almost 1,000 Morrisons Daily stores trading and said its convenience business is on track to profitable by the year end.
Looking ahead, Potts said: “We are making very good progress on both our £700 million three-year cost reduction programme and our plans to deliver £500 million of working capital improvements over the medium term. I am pleased to be confirming our guidance for full year underlying EBITDA to be up and for debt to be down.”
