Restructuring leads to loss for Morrisons

The share price of supermarket chain Morrisons has plummeted today (March 14th) after the company announced a major loss in its latest financial results.

In its sales data for the full year to February 2nd, Morrisons revealed that it lost £176 million over the 12-month period as a result of costs associated with its restructuring.

Chairman Sir Ian Gibson admitted that it was a "disappointing" year for the company, as revenues fell by two per cent and the firm fell further behind rivals Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's.

Shares in the supermarket company fell by ten per cent early in the morning session on the London Stock Exchange, before briefly recovering. However, later in the day they continued to slide as investors lost faith in the financial health of the business. At 13:24 GMT, stocks in the firm were about 11 per cent down for the day and still falling.

Online sales

Morrisons has found it hard to compete with supermarket giants such as Tesco as a result of not selling food online. The company is now hoping to arrest the decline of the last 12 months with a new link-up with online food delivery firm Ocado.

The company stated that profits in the coming year would be less than £375 million, which would still be less than half of the money made by the company in the 12 months to February 2012.

Chief executive Dalton Philips told the BBC that the restructuring of the business will include ensuring the firm offers great value to members of the public who shop at its stores.

Mr Philips insisted that vastly dropping the price of its goods would not be on the agenda in the coming months, adding: "There is a tipping point where the price perception gap has just widened too far between the discounters and the big four and we're going to address that.

"We have identified over a billion pounds that we can take out of our business now and that billion pounds is going to be invested back into our proposition to get those lower prices for our customers."

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