Morrisons has had to trim margins to maintain its level of growth, but still managed to push pretax profits before exceptional items up 9.1% to £86.4m. In the 27 weeks to August 6, turnover was £1,709m, up 15% on the same period last year. MD John Dowd said: "There is intense competition and our margins are down from 5.4% to 5.1%. We needed to achieve a competitive edge on prices and this helped to increase the number of customers, sales and profits." Dowd said the company was continuing to develop new stores with six due to open in the second half of the year and seven already in the pipeline for next year. However, he said it was increasingly difficult to locate sites. All the new stores were in town or district centres. Dowd said Morrisons was strengthening its presence in Wales, and was keen to develop stores south of its store in Erith, Kent, which is its most southerly, but has not been able to secure suitable sites. He added: "Refurbishment and replacing older stores has produced extremely good sales uplifts." Dowd said there were no plans to go into internet shopping. "There is no evidence that there are any profits to be taken from it," he said "We are a no frills volume retailer, and the internet is frills." Chairman Ken Morrison said the second half year had started strongly with turnover up 16% for the five weeks prior to the fuel crisis. He said no shortages, other than fuel, had been reported last week. {{NEWS }}

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