Shares in British supermarket Morrisons rose nearly 4 percent on Tuesday, after a new ‘luxury’ range and cloud technology ordering system contributed to their best Christmas performance in seven years.
In the nine weeks to 1 January, like-for-like sales rose 2.9 percent, up 4.7 percent including fuel. Total sales also rose 2.0 percent, despite the ongoing impact of store closures.
The company attributed the strong figures to the recently introduced ordering system for grocery and many fresh categories, the first such system for the supermarket chain. According to the supermarket, the system is capital light, utilising cloud technology and store-specific historic sales data to forecast stock requirements.
Morrisons also said their new ‘Best’ range, a ‘luxury’ range aimed at a similar market to Tesco’s ‘Finest’ is already proving very popular, with over half of customer baskets including at least one ‘Best’ item. The supermarket launched 100 new ‘Best’ products for the Christmas season, adding to the 470 launched in the Autumn.
David Potts, Morrisons’ Chief Executive, said:
“This Christmas we made further improvements to the customer shopping trip. We stocked more of what our customers wanted to buy, more tills were open more often, and product availability improved as over half of sales went through our new ordering system. Both like-for-like and total sales grew, which was very encouraging.
“Eighteen months ago I said that this would be a colleague-led turnaround, and our improving performance is entirely due to the continuing hard work of the Morrisons team of food makers and shopkeepers. I would like to thank all colleagues for making Christmas and New Year extra special for our customers.”
Morrisons reaffirmed previous guidance, saying it expects 2016/17 year-end net debt to be around £1.2 billion, with underlying profit before tax to be above expectations and in the range of £330 million to £340 million.
Morrisons (LON:MRW) shares are currently up 3.45 percent at 245.60 (0917GMT).