Shares in Morrisons slid by 5% in early morning trading as the troubled supermarket announced a hefty 47% drop in half-year profits before tax to £126m.
On Thursday morning, the group’s stock was down 8.6p or 5% at 167.3p by 08:52 as it also revealed plans to shut 11 stores, which could potentially mean a loss of around 900 jobs.
It also said that over the six months to 2 August 2015, like-for-like sales tumbled 2.7% compared to the same period in 2014.
This followed an announcement on Wednesday that Morrisons was selling of 140 of its M local convenience stores for £25m.
The FTSE 100 listed group’s new chief executive David Potts who joined the business in March this year said the immediate priority is “to deliver a better shopping trip to stabilise trading performance”.
He outlined the firm’s “six strategic priorities” as
- To be more competitive
- To serve customers better
- Find local solutions
- Develop popular and useful services
- To simplify and speed up the organisation
- To make core supermarkets strong again
In a statement issued with its results, Potts added: “Our six strategic priorities will then deliver improvement in the core supermarkets, where we have the greatest opportunity.”
“It will be a long journey. We approach the challenge with energy, confidence and many strengths, particularly our strong balance sheet and cash flow, which enables investment in improving the customer shopping trip.
“As previously guided, we expect underlying profit before tax will be higher in the second half of 2015/16 than the first.”
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