Finance
UK's Morrisons blames higher costs for flat annual earnings
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on January 21, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on January 21, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Morrisons reported a 3.4% sales increase over the Christmas period, improving from the previous quarter. Annual revenue rose to 15.8 billion pounds.
LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - British supermarket group Morrisons on Wednesday reported flat core earnings for its 2024/25 year, blaming higher costs, but said trading improved over the key Christmas period.
The UK's fifth largest grocer, owned by U.S. private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, said underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were static at 835 million pounds ($1.1 billion) in its year to October 26 despite revenue rising 3.2% to 15.8 billion pounds.
The earnings outcome was attributed to a 200 million pounds increase in costs as a result of the UK government's 2024 budget, the impact of a cyber incident in the first quarter and higher than expected inflation.
While like-for-like sales growth in its fourth quarter to October 26 dipped to 2.4%, having been 3.0% in the third quarter, it rose to 3.4% in the six weeks to January 4, helped by a 17.4% jump in sales of Morrisons' 'The Best' premium own label range.
"We had a good Christmas in 2025, providing a solid foundation for the first quarter," said CEO Rami Baitiéh.
However, industry data, published earlier this month, showed Morrisons continuing to underperform rivals Tesco and Sainsbury's and discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Tesco and Sainsbury's published robust Christmas trading updates earlier this month.
Morrisons said its debt was further reduced in its 2024/25 year and is down 46% from its 2022 peak.
($1 = 0.7443 pounds)
(Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)
Like-for-like sales refer to the revenue generated by stores that have been open for a year or more, allowing for a comparison of performance without the influence of new store openings.
Core earnings represent a company's profit from its primary business operations, excluding any income derived from non-operational activities or one-time events.
Revenue is the total amount of money generated by a company's business activities, typically from the sale of goods or services before any expenses are deducted.
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