Morrisons has reported a seventh straight quarter of underlying sales growth and said overall performance was improving under new chief executive Rami Baitieh.
Britain’s fifth-largest supermarket chain said like-for-like sales excluding fuel and VAT sales tax rose 4.6% in its fiscal first quarter to 28 January.
This indicates the company’s strongest quarterly growth for three years.
Total revenue excluding fuel and VAT sales tax increased by 3.9% to £3.9 billion.
‘Raise Our Game’
Baitieh, who was formerly the Carrefour boss, took over the US private-equity owned company in November.
Baitieh said, “Across the business we have identified many areas where we can raise our game and make small improvements which collectively will result in a significantly enhanced shopping experience for our customers.”
The retailer had already seen improvements in product availability and innovation, as well as reducing waste, he said.
He added, “Our key customer metrics are improving and complaints – which in many ways are the canaries in the retail coalmine – are down almost 60% in the last 20 weeks.”
However, industry data published this week indicated that Morrisons was continuing to lose market share to rivals, including Tesco, Sainsburys, Lidl and Aldi.
The data from market researcher Kantar showed that Morrisons held 8.7% of the UK’s market share in the 12 weeks to 7 March.
This was down 10 basis points on the year.
Changes
Morrisons ended the 2022/2023 financial year with debt of about £5.5 billion. Interest payments on the debt have hindered the retailer’s ability to compete with other supermarkets.
Last month, Morrisons followed competitors Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda in matching prices from discount retailers Aldi and Lidl.
The move was made in an effort to keep pace with competitors.
In January, Morrisons sold its petrol station business.
The retailer differs from its rivals in that it also has its own production operation and makes half of the fresh food it sells.
In terms of long-term growth, Baitieh said new plans had been developed for wholesale, convenience, franchise, export markets and global sourcing.
Read More: Morrisons UK Follows Rivals With Price Matching Scheme
