Morrisons delivers strongest sales growth for a year as World Cup boosts business

Morrisons delivered its strongest sales growth for a year as the World Cup helped to bring shoppers through its doors. 

The struggling supermarket, which is in the process of a major turnaround, said hot weather and the football tournament lifted group like-for-like sales by 3.2 per cent over the 13 weeks to July 26.

Chief executive Rami Baitiéh, who took over as chief executive in November 2023, said it was ‘clear evidence that our strategy is delivering and that we remain on track.’ 

Baitiéh has overseen price cuts to reverse Morrisons’ fortunes after losing market share to German discounters Aldi and Lidl. 

But he admitted that trading conditions ‘remained highly competitive’ amid a price war between major supermarkets that has seen similar price cutting schemes.

Even Waitrose, whose clientele are typically quite well-off, has been forced to cut prices to compete with competitors. The retailer today announced it was spending £20million on cutting the prices of just under 400 products by an average of 11 per cent.

Baitiéh added: ‘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 per cent. This is our strongest quarter since Q2 2025, and our fifteenth consecutive quarter of like-for-like growth.

He said keeping prices low was ‘key to this performance.’

Last month, Morrisons launched a new ‘unbeatable prices’ pledge across more than 500 everyday products. It promises that the products covered will cost the same or less than at Aldi, Asda, Lidl, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, which ‘has already had a positive impact.’

The retailer clung onto its market share of 8.4 per cent over the 12 weeks to 6 September, according to more recent figures from market researchers at Worldpanel by Numerator. And sales rose 2.8 per cent to £3.06billion.

The business has been struggling since it was taken over by private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) in 2021 and last year its debt pile hit £7.5billion.

Jonathan de Mello, founder and CEO at retail consultancy JDM Retail, said the results were still disappointing and ‘primarily the result of temporary cyclical boosts’.

He added: ‘Morrisons’ continues to underwhelm, despite the positive spin in their latest update.

‘Morrisons’ perennial problem has always been its lack of a distinctive offer and a weaker convenience footprint relative to major rivals.

‘More importantly, the business remains hamstrung by the weight of its £7.5bn private equity debt. This financial stranglehold forces short-term, defensive cost-cutting and aggressive asset disposals just to manage leverage and service immense finance costs, rather than allowing Morrisons to invest for growth.’

It came as rival Asda – which has had similar difficulties in the wake of being taken over by private equity – yesterday said it was ‘in the foothills of recovery’. Worldpanel figures showed that sales increased 0.1 per cent to £4.17billion in the 12 weeks to September 6 – the first time they have grown since March 2024.