Morrisons: Debt-laden grocer records strongest sales growth in three years
Supermarket Morrisons has reported its strongest like-for-like sales in over three years, helped by competitive pricing strategies.
Morrisons recently lost its spot as the UK’s fourth-largest grocer to Aldi, as customers turned to the German discounter amid the cost-of-living crisis.
The privately owned business said it rolled out Aldi and Lidl Price match schemes which helped drive like-for-like sales by 4.6 per cent.
Total sales excluding those it made from fuel reached £3.9bn in the first quarter of the year.
Morrisons has a market share of 8.8 per cent, just 1.1 per cent less than Aldi, but significantly lagging behind Tesco, which has a reach of 26.9 per cent.
Grocers have fallen under significant pressure in recent months, with all major players slashing their prices to entice customers.
Rami Baitiéh, chief executive of Morrisons said: “In January I outlined our plan to reinvigorate, refresh and strengthen Morrisons as we started our next chapter.
“Those plans are now in full swing with the whole business engaged in the three key pillars of work that will be the foundation of the future for Morrisons: commercial excellence, operations optimisation and new value creation. “
He added: “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.”
Morrisons has been battling a mounting debt pile of over £8bn since it was taken private by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) three years ago.
In January, it completed a £2.5bn deal to sell its 347 petrol stations to Motor Fuel Group (MFG) in efforts to slash its debt.
Both Morrisons and MFG are owned by CD&R. As part of the transaction Morrisons took a minority stake of approximately 20 per cent in MFG.
The business also recently acquired McColl’s newsagents out of administration with plans to transform the stores into Morrisons Daily sites.