Morrisons Making Good Progress With 7 Per Cent Profit Rise

Thu, 12 Mar 2009
 
Get the latest prices, codes, vouchers & deals fortnightly.
Morrisons has reported a 7 per cent rise in annual profits as it continues to defy the "extremely challenging" competitive environment.

The UK's fourth-largest supermarket chain said pre-tax profits rose to £655m in the year to Feb 1, up from £612m the previous year, as total turnover soared by 12 per cent to £14.5bn.

Like-for-like sales for the year, excluding petrol, grew by 7.9 per cent and total turnover increased by 12 per cent to £14.5bn.

Chairman Sir Ian Gibson commented: "'This was another year of good progress for Morrisons as we continued to grow sales, profits and dividends, whilst also investing to generate future growth."

Morrisons, which operates 380 stores in the UK, said that it was enjoying particularly strong growth in its Value range of food, where sales soared by 50 per cent.

The Bradford-based retailer also revealed that an extra 550,000 customers were shopping at its stores each week, including people from all social and economic backgrounds.

Based on data from market research firm TNS, Morrisons said that its overall share of the UK grocery market has risen from 12.1 per cent to 12.3 per cent over the year.

Morrisons also announced that it was scrapping previously-announced plans to buy back its shares, saying that it would use the money to invest in the business instead.

It added that it expects to open around 350,000 square feet of new retail space this year, in addition to the stores it had bought from the Co-operative Group.

"We have identified significant potential to attract new customers and will focus on space growth in order to take us from a national to a nationwide company," the company said.

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.