Morrisons has released its full-year financial statement, showing a 52% fall in pre-tax profit, its worst results in eight years. Chairman Andrew Higginson said that this was due to a tough year, but added that the supermarket is a “strong, distinctive business”.
On a positive note, the company’s new CEO David Potts joins the business next week and the figures ended with £785 million free cash flow pre-dividend and generated £42 million of cash post-dividend and pre-property disposals.
Mr Potts will oversee the ongoing development of the company’s much needed IT platform although the company has said that its convenience store rollout will slow “significantly”.
Chairman Andrew Higginson said "Last year's trading environment was tough, and we don't expect any change this year. However, Morrisons is a strong, distinctive business - we own most of our supermarkets, have strong cash flow, and are famous with customers for great quality fresh food at low prices. This gives us a good platform.
"David Potts joins as chief executive next week. Under his leadership, we will focus on building trading momentum and being more like the Morrisons our customers expect. We will invest more into the proposition and put customers at the heart of everything we do. We will listen and respond to our customers and work hard every day to improve the shopping trip.
"Success measures will be simple - more customers buying more from us. More customers means more volume growth which, ultimately, will lead to better like-for-like, profitability and shareholder returns."
