Sainsbury’s joined rival supermarkets by recording its first loss in a decade, blaming a year of “unprecedented change”.
It was a modest deficit of £72 million, coming a fortnight after Tesco’s £6.4 billion annual loss, and the figure was dragged lower by a one-off write-down of £628 million on the value of its property estate.
He said: “The UK marketplace is changing faster than at any time in the past 30 years which has impacted our profits, like-for-like sales and market share.
“However, we are making good progress with our strategy, and our investment in price and quality is showing encouraging early signs of volume and transaction growth.”
The company also cut its full-year dividend for shareholders by 23.7%.
The value of the company’s property decreased during the year by £900 million to £11.1 billion, mainly due to a reduction in market rental values. The group has 597 supermarkets and 707 convenience shops.