“A considerable number of these acquired stores are located in localities in Morrison's northern England heartland. As such, their increased competitiveness under the Asda banner represented a negative share shift for Morrison over the other major players.”
But Morrison may be through the worst with respect to this particular challenge, they added.
Shore Capital said Morrison’s underlying hadbeen “subdued and the business has underperformed its superstore peers”.
Sharper competition
In addition to sharper competition from Asda and others, Morrison’s results are likely to be impacted by challenges associated with its store modernisation and the introduction of Fresh Formats plus reduced consumer spending.
“Morrison has embarked upon a store modernisation and change programme that we believe poses challenges as well as opportunities,” said Black and Shirley. They suggested the retailer’s plans to ensure 48 updated ‘Fresh Format’ stores would be trading by the end of July were “likely to have negatively impacted Morrison's sales due to store disruption”.
They feared 'Fresh Formats maybe “falling between two stools.” They may“disenfranchising core value based customers with a higher category fresh food offer that has, as yet, failed to entice more affluent ones.”
Asda and Aldi could have benefited most from the transfer of value based customers in Morrison’s trading heartlands, said Black and Shirley.
‘Distracted management’
Implementing the Fresh Formats plan may also have distracted Morrison's management at a time when “aggressive new trading tactics were starting to particularly impact the market”, they added.
Continued pressure on shoppers’ spending is also affecting all retailers.“At a time when Morrison is arguably moving up the value chain, there is the most extensive evidence for some time that trading down is a feature of the UK food market.
For example supermarkets’ private label value lines are gaining share over premium ranges at a seemingly widening rate, deep-discounters (Aldi & Lidl) continue to gain ever stronger consumer support and strong evidence persists of the compression of basket size through lower wastage.”
Also Morrisons has limited presence in the growing convenience segment and still no participation in grocery online.
Shore Capital identified a current pretax profit estimate of £422M and retained its ‘sell’ advice on Morrison’s stock.
