Not the most exciting share, but with safeway conversion now complete (and how much better the old safeway stores are now) the shares should start to come back. Already started a nice rise from a recent low. Costs for conversions will still hold the price back but when that is out of the way, should be be nice. 190p

I was in a tad too early but not hurting at mo.,.

From its origins as a market stall in the late nineteenth century, Morrisons has grown to be the fourth largest food retailer in the UK today.

One key development in the company's history was the £3bn takeover of Safeway in 2004. This transformed Morrisons into a top-tier retailer with nationwide reach. However, the deal encountered significant integration difficulties.

This resulted in profit warnings and significant investor disquiet. There were even calls for its septuagenarian founder Sir Ken Morrison to leave the board -- mostly from people with zero experience of retail.

Again, there was an important sign in the company's dividend. Despite the criticism, Morrisons increased its dividend almost 14% with the 2005 finals.

This did not stop the shares falling as low as 165p. Yet within 18 months, the shares were back above 300p.

Morrison's dividend is expected to hit 11.8p for 2013, more than three times the 2005 payout. The Safeway acquisition was a company-maker.

Headline in the Express today - Morrisons hit by poor trade. In short Morrisons could
be forced to issue a profits warning early next year if lagging trade does not pick up,city analysts have warned. Market share is down 0.5% for the four weeks to the middle of October.

Not good.

Morrison: Seymour Pierce downgrades from hold to reduce, target cut from 300p to 250p.

Broker snap: Morrison to disappoint with Q3 sales, says Seymour Pierce
Thu 01 Nov 2012

LONDON (SHARECAST) - Seymour Pierce has downgraded its rating for supermarket group WM Morrison from 'hold' to 'reduce' and cut its target price for the shares from 300p to 250p ahead of the firm's third-quarter results next week.

Analyst Kate Calvert said: "Recent market share data points to continued deterioration in sales trends and so a weak number is expected by the market next week". Morrison will be reporting on November 8th.

Seymour Pierce expects third-quarter (13 weeks to end of October) like-for-like (LFL) sales excluding petrol to be down 2%, compared with a lesser second-quarter LFL decline of 0.9%.

"The news that Morrison is accepting other retailers vouchers and aggressively couponing (£5 off £40 spend) also suggests trading remains under pressure," Calvert said. Meanwhile, she said that sales are unlikely to have been helped from the launch of Morrison's 'Fuel Saver' promotion on September 13th.

Calvert said: "Consequently pressure remains on forecasts and we expect further downgrades with this update. The recent share price underperformance has started to discount this to an extent and there is some support from the 4.4% dividend yield and on-going share buyback programme.

"However, we expect the shares to drift further given management may well have to invest margin to protect market share as we believe Christmas will be extremely aggressive, as Tesco can not afford to continue underperforming either and consumer spending is expected to remain subdued."

Shares were down 0.34% at 267p in mid-morning trade.

Morrisons is expected to confirm this week alongside a third quarter trading update that it will launch a family clothing brand called Nutmeg next Easter. Morrisons is the last of the major supermarket groups to launch its own clothing brand, a part of the industry that has thrived following George Davies' launch of George at Asda in the 1990s. The supermarket group has hired former Peacocks managing director Tim Bettley to become its director of clothing and is building an internal buying, merchandising, and design team of about 50 staff. The Nutmeg staff will this week move into a new headquarters in Coalville, Leicestershire. Nutmeg will go on sale in about 100 Morrisons' stores next March. Initially, Morrisons plans to focus on children's clothing and adult essentials, The Sunday Telegraph says.

suspect that diverging into clothing is a gasp/grasp for breath/straws ..... it's certainly moving away from their base philosophy

Agree not the answer.

Asda has done very well out of it's clothing brand. May be a good strategy.

Trouble is they are 20 years behind Tesco . Could they not come up with a better word for the clothing range then nutmeg. Are they going to compete with Associated British foods who have Primark ? Cannot see them pulling back market share
with this thought. Pulling in a ex Peacocks clothing director - hardly a high flyer. In our nearest Morrisons store they just do not seem to have the offers that the other big three have. They have started accepting other supermarkets voucher promotions,
that does not read good.

Tesco and Asda have accepted other supermarket vouchers for yonks so it's a positive move imo.

Are you short dreamcatcher ?

No Im 6ft :-)) Joking apart no Dil Iam not short. If it was good news I would treat it the same.


Analyst Kate Calvert said: "Recent market share data points to continued deterioration in sales trends and so a weak number is expected by the market next week". Morrison will be reporting on November 8th.

Seymour Pierce expects third-quarter (13 weeks to end of October) like-for-like (LFL) sales excluding petrol to be down 2%, compared with a lesser second-quarter LFL decline of 0.9%.

"The news that Morrison is accepting other retailers vouchers and aggressively couponing (£5 off £40 spend) also suggests trading remains under pressure," Calvert said. Meanwhile, she said that sales are unlikely to have been helped from the launch of Morrison's 'Fuel Saver' promotion on September 13th.

Calvert said: "Consequently pressure remains on forecasts and we expect further downgrades with this update. The recent share price underperformance has started to discount this to an extent and there is some support from the 4.4% dividend yield and on-going share buyback programme.

"However, we expect the shares to drift further given management may well have to invest margin to protect market share as we believe Christmas will be extremely aggressive, as Tesco can not afford to continue underperforming either and consumer spending is expected to remain subdued."

I would only love them to turn operations around, but having seen what happened to Tesco at the start of the year I fear for them. A supermarket cannot afford to fall behind in this age of such aggressive competition, if you want to give up the all important market share a competitor will wip it out of your hands. The figures will tell the story this week.

3rd Quarter Results

With consumer confidence still fragile and high levels of promotional activity a persistent feature of the market, the trading environment has remained challenging through the period and sales were lower than anticipated. In the quarter to 28 October 2012, total sales* excluding fuel were down by 0.4% (up 0.2% including fuel) and like for like sales* were down 2.1% (down 1.3% including fuel).

The business is making good progress in delivering the strategic initiatives which will provide a solid foundation for our future growth. During the period we have introduced our market leading Fresh Format into a further 35 stores and are on track to meet our target of extending this to 100 stores by the end of this fiscal year. We remain pleased with their progress both in terms of sales performance and customer feedback. Our Own Brand relaunch which will extend to 10,000 products is progressing well and we have made significant progress in the delivery of Evolve, our IT infrastructure project, with the introduction of the crucial supply chain management system. We have also launched Morrisons Cellar, our online wine operation.

Whilst we are encouraged by the progress of these strategic initiatives we recognise the ongoing importance of improving our performance, particularly in the communication of Morrisons key points of difference to our customers and in improving the effectiveness of our promotional activity. We have put in place a number of measures to enable us to achieve this.

We are well advanced on our programme to retire £1bn of equity over the two years to March 2013. To date we have acquired 299m shares at a total investment of £852m. The financial position of the Group remains strong.

Outlook

We expect the market to remain challenging for the remainder of the year. However we continue to manage the business tightly and anticipate that our full year financial performance will be broadly in line with our expectations.


*exc. VAT and reported in accordance with IFRIC 13

- ENDS-

Trading statement monday, don't think it's going to be good news... we'll see.,.

i was surprised to see the other day that Morrison's had taken over a very large Waitrose site on the Chippenham (Wiltshire) ring road

Analysts think No. 4 grocer Wm Morrison Supermarkets will, on Monday, post the worst of the Christmas figures out of the food retailers reporting next week.

Sales at Morrison stores open over a year, excluding fuel, were seen down about 2 percent. That would follow a fiscal third-quarter fall of 2.1 percent and partly reflect the lack of an online presence and minimal convenience store presence.

Indeed, the retail sector's best Christmas performers - all helped by a strong online presence - may have reported already.

Ant & Dec To Front Morrisons' TV Adverts

While the UK's flirtation with a triple-dip recession has cast a shadow over the sector for months and will do little to spark a marked upswing in consumer confidence, Morrison is being targeted in anticipation of weak sales.

Demand to borrow Morrisons stock to sell short over the last month was up 40 percent, Alex Brog at data firm Markit said. "It's not the most shorted in absolute terms, but the rise in the last month has been significant," adding 4.3 percent of the company's stock was out on loan.

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