British supermarket group Morrisons on Wednesday (Sept 16) reported an acceleration in underlying sales growth in its third quarter, propelled by the continued growth in convenience sector as a further 71 new Morrisons Daily franchise stores opened so far this year.
Morrisons, the UK's sixth-largest grocer and owned by U.S. private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice since 2022, said its like-for-like sales rose 3.2% in the 13 weeks to July 26, having been up 2.2% in the previous quarter. Total sales were £4.1 billion.
Morrisons, which differs from its main rivals in that it also has its own production operations, making half of the fresh food it sells, said it had made "a good start" to its fourth quarter and was well set for Halloween.
It said its third quarter, benefited from the hot weather and the soccer World Cup, and it grew sales and volumes ahead of the market, expanding its market share.
Morrisons reported that further £53 million of cost savings delivered in the quarter, taking the total to £995 million since the start of the programme, offsetting cost headwinds and enabling further investment in our customer offer.
Rami Baitiéh, Chief Executive, said: “Trading conditions in Q3 remained highly competitive but the period also benefited from the hot weather and the World Cup.
"We traded strongly, growing ahead of the market and delivering a robust result, with an acceleration of like-for-like sales growth to 3.2%. This is our strongest quarter since Q2 2025, and our fifteenth consecutive quarter of like-for-like growth.“Our stronger sales momentum reflected a broad-based improvement across the business - with our Supermarkets, Online, Convenience, Pharmacy and Myton manufacturing businesses all reporting good growth, underlining our progress with our plans to renew and modernise Morrisons.
“Key to this performance is our continued commitment to keeping prices low. The recent launch of our Unbeatables price promise, which guarantees customers won’t find better value on hundreds of essential products at named major supermarkets, has already had a positive impact.
“We are pleased with our Q3 performance - our stronger like-for-like sales, the combination of lower prices and volume growth, and our market share improvement, are all clear evidence that our strategy is delivering and that we remain on track with our plans.
“We have made a good start to Q4 and are well-prepared for Halloween and the final weeks of the financial year, as we continue to drive further improvements to our offer while keeping prices low for customers.
“This strong result was built on the hard work of colleagues across the group and I want to thank them all for their continued commitment.”
Jo Goff, Chief Financial Officer said: “Q3 showed good progress against all of our key performance measures. Cumulative cost savings now approaching £1 billion helped us offset extensive external cost headwinds while also focussing on what is most important; investment in our colleagues and in stronger value for customers.
"Our working capital improvement programme continues to progress well and our confidence that there is more to come is demonstrated by our decision to raise our target today to £750 million.
“In addition, we have proactively reduced debt by 46% since 2022 and have no near term maturities. Our well-invested supermarket estate remains overwhelmingly freehold, and we have a strong balance sheet, providing solid foundations for further progress.”