Morrisons like-for-like sales edged up 1% in its second quarter, as it looks to focus on expanding its convenience offering.
The supermarket giant’s total sales, excluding fuel, at £3.7bn, up by 3.1%, however, lower petrol and diesel sales meant overall sales down by 0.9% to £4.5bn.
Morrisons now looks to focus on its convenience offering, as it currently operates almost 650 Morrisons Daily stores, around 400 of which are former McColl’s.
CEO David Potts said “converted stores continue to see significant sales uplift”.
Some 170 convenience stores were added during the quarter and Morrisons now expects to have almost 1,000 Daily stores trading by the end of the year, which it said would give it a “significantly enhanced position in the UK convenience sector”.
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Potts said that Morrisons is “still in the foothills of its new journey,” but added that it’s “making good progress” in 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,” he said.
Earlier this week, Morrisons unveiled its sixth round of price cuts this year, having invested £26m in cutting 47 high-volume products by an average of more than 25%.
It also relaunched its loyalty programme, the More Card, which Potts said was “an important moment for the business.”
“The new scheme is a significantly more competitive and compelling loyalty programme and the early feedback from customers has been excellent with a substantial increase in active participants.”
He added that Morrisons is “making very good progress” on its £700m three-year cost reduction programme, as well as its plans to deliver £500m of working capital improvements.
“I am pleased to be confirming our guidance for full year underlying EBITDA to be up and for debt to be down.”
