Morrisons hails sixth consecutive quarter of sales growth

Supermarket chain Morrisons reports its full year total revenue, excluding fuel, is up 2.7% to £14.9bn in its full year of trading for the 52 weeks ending 29 October 2023.

Group like-for-like (LFL) sales, excluding fuel, were up 3.3% for quarter four and 1.8% for the year, representing six consecutive quarters of LFL improvement for the Bradford-headquartered business.

Retail sales, which includes supermarkets, online and convenience (from Q3 onwards), contributed 2.9% in the quarter.

Within that, online sales grew 1.6% and convenience, which includes the McColl’s stores brand, grew by 9%. Wholesale contributed a further 0.4% with double-digit wholesale LFL growth maintained throughout the year.

Rami Baitiéh, chief executive, said: “Reporting today our sixth consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales improvement is very positive.

“But there is so much more we can do, and together with my colleagues, we are developing plans to reinvigorate, refresh and strengthen Morrisons and to start a new chapter – which begins with our customers.

“Across the business we are listening hard to what our customers are telling us and taking action, and we are just beginning to see our customer satisfaction scores improve. This will be the bedrock of our next chapter.”

Jo Goff, CFO, added: “This has been a year of steady progress as we continued to invest in price, customer service, loyalty and made further improvements in our own brand range and in quality.

“We’ve made good progress on our working capital improvement process with a further £100m in Q4, taking the total for the year to £300m, more than half the £500m multi-year target and ahead of our expectations.”