By James Davey
LONDON (Reuters) - The new boss of Morrisons said on Wednesday the British supermarket group's performance since the pandemic had not been good enough, and he will provide an update on strategy in March.
Ex-Carrefour France boss Rami Baitiéh became Morrisons CEO in November, succeeding industry veteran David Potts.
"There are so many great strengths at Morrisons but I must also be very direct," he told reporters after the group published annual results.
"Since the pandemic, Morrisons has not been on peak form, our market share has slipped, slowly but consistently, our like-for-likes (sales), although on an improving and encouraging trend now, have been below the pack for a while, and the switching data has not been encouraging," he said.
"So although we have many structural, operational and cultural strengths, we must not be satisfied with our recent performance."
Baitiéh said he was working on plans to address the situation, with a focus on listening to customers and staff.
Morrisons, owned since 2021 by U.S. private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, said its core earnings, or underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 6.5% to 970 million pounds ($1.23 billion) in the year to Oct. 29, on revenue, excluding fuel, up 2.7% to 14.9 billion pounds.
Fourth quarter like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, were up 3.3%, a sixth straight quarter of improvement, which reflected more competitive prices and a new customer loyalty scheme.
Morrisons did not comment on its Christmas trading.
Data from researcher Kantar shows Morrisons ended 2023 with a UK grocery market share of 8.8%, down 30 basis points on the year.
Kantar's data has shown Morrisons underperforming rivals, including market leader Tesco (LON:TSCO), No. 2 Sainsbury's and the German-owned discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Morrisons, which differs from its main rivals in that it also has its own production operations and makes half of the fresh food it sells, was overtaken by Aldi in 2022 as Britain's fourth-largest supermarket by market share.
On Tuesday, Morrisons announced a deal to sell its petrol stations portfolio to Motor Fuel Group, which is also majority-owned by CD&R. Most of the proceeds of about 2 billion pounds will be used to pay down debt, which was 5.5 billion pounds at the year end.
Interest payments in the 2022/23 year were about 400 million pounds.
($1 = 0.7890 pounds)