Morrisons has pledged to open more small stores.
The supermarket giant reported a 30% rise in full year pre-tax profits to £858m as turnover rose by 6% to £15.4bn.
Morrisons, which is Britain’s fourth-biggest supermarket chain, has opened 45 stores during the past year.
Sir Ian Gibson, the non-executive chairman of Morrisons said that the positive response from customers to new store openings had encouraged the supermarket to look at trading from smaller stores in future.
“While these stores are smaller than our average, we are confident that we can operate this size of store very successfully,” he said in the Times.
“There are now 96 such stores in our estate, and we expect that smaller-store formats will form an important element of our ongoing new space acquisition strategy.”
Morrison’s new chief executive, Dalton Philips, will take up his post on 29 March.
