Morrisons pulled in a £1bn loss last year, as debt interest payments related to its private equity takeover soared.
Accounts for the grocery giant’s parent company, Market Topco, revealed it fell to a pre-tax loss of £1.1bn for the year ended October, as its interest costs surged to £735m.
These were related to external debt and inter-company loans, with its debt-financing bill 23% above the £593m incurred the year prior.
Sales slumped to £18.4bn from £18.7bn the year before, as underlying profits excluding debt interest costs hit £970m from £911m.
Additionally, fuel sales at the supermarket dropped more than £560m to £3.4bn, before it offloaded its 337 petrol forecourts to Motor Fuel Group two months ago in a £2.5bn deal.
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The retailer is expected to use a large amount of this money to reduce its £5.4bn worth of debt.
A spokesperson for Morrisons said: “Morrisons’ financial performance highlights the progress the company has made, delivering six consecutive quarters of like-for-like growth.”
They added that while statutory profits had been impacted by “a number of non-cash items”, it insisted that “the underlying performance of the business is strong”.
Last week, it was revealed that Morrisons was set to cut almost 300 jobs as part of a management restructure of its logistics operations.
The supermarket chain is looking to consolidate the number of warehouse manager roles at each of its seven distribution centres under a single operations manager role.
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2 Comments. Leave new
Classic case of ladening a company with debt, selling off assets demolishing a company which someone else built. Then the debt is too expensive to service.
The americans haven’t got an ounce of interest in making the business work.
Indeed