Morrisons has reported its strongest like-for-like sales growth in three years during its trading update for its first quarter.
The supermarket saw like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, soar 4.6% from a 0.1% rise the year before. Total sales excluding fuel were up by 3.9% to £3.9bn.
The news means Morrisons has seen seven consecutive quarters of like-for-like sales improvement, according to the business.
The grocer claimed its key customer satisfaction metrics were “improving strongly”, and that its complaints had more than halved during the last 20 weeks.
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Morrisons CEO Rami Baitiéh said: “In January I outlined our plan to reinvigorate, refresh and strengthen Morrisons as we started our next chapter.
“Those plans are now in full swing with the whole business engaged in the three key pillars of work that will be the foundation of the future for Morrisons: commercial excellence, operations optimisation and new value creation.”
He added: “For longer term and sustainable growth, we have developed new plans for growth in wholesale, convenience, franchise, export markets and global sourcing and we are now moving quickly to implement them.”
The update comes depsite the grocer pulling in a £1bn loss last year, as its debt interest payments related to its private equity takeover soared.
Earlier this month, 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 its external debt and inter-company loans, with its debt-financing bill 23% above the £593m incurred the year prior.
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