LONDON: Britain's struggling supermarket chain Wm Morrison said a sales fall worsened over Christmas as bland promotions failed to lure customers also put off by its lack of an online presence and convenience stores.
The UK's fourth-biggest grocer behind market leader Tesco, Wal-Mart's Asda and J Sainsbury said yesterday sales at stores open over a year fell 2.5 percent in the six weeks to Dec. 30, picking up speed from a third quarter drop of 2.1 percent.
Many of Britain's grocers are finding the going tough, despite their focus on essential goods, as consumers fret over job security and a squeeze on incomes.
But the convenience store market is growing at about 6 percent a year, while the online food market is growing at about 20 percent — channels long exploited by Morrisons' rivals. Tesco and Sainsburys are expected to show some sales growth in contrast to Morrisons, which has only a f e w convenience stores and no website for home delivery of food.
Analysts, who tipped Morrisons to be the weakest Christmas performer of Britain's so called "big four" supermarkets, forecast like-for-like sales to fall between 2 and 3 percent.
As a result of the company's well-flagged structural disadvantages, many traders bet against it ahead of its trading update. Demand to borrow Morrisons stock to sell short over the last month rose 40 percent, according to data firm Markit.
Morrisons Chief Executive Dalton Philips said that with consumer confidence "fragile" he expected difficult market conditions to continue through 2013.
However he said the 482-store group would focus on doing a better job of telling customers how its products and service beat those of other supermarkets, in particular by pointing out its more than 5,000 trained butchers, bakers and fishmongers.
"We have real craft skills in our stores ... and we need to shout about it," said Philips. "I think you'll see a lot more as we go into Q1 of 2013."
Philips has yet to decide whether Morrisons will launch an online food offer but is researching the possibility and will say more when the firm publishes full year results in March.
"We're not too late to the party, it's still only 5 percent of the market. So in terms of the long term we haven't lost out," he said.
"This is a market where for 12 years people haven't made money and we want to do the right thing both for our shareholders and our customers."
Morrisons also failed to make its promotions stand out amid a sea of supermarket discount vouchers at Christmas, and Philips said the company would also look at ways to differentiate itself in this area.
"We have got to do things differently with our promotional program," he said.
Despite the sales decline Morrisons said its full year performance would be broadly in line with expectations. Analysts' consensus for 2012-13 underlying pretax profit before yesterday's update was 913 million pounds, down from 935 million pounds in 2011-12.
Morrisons shares, down 20 percent over the last year, were up 0.2 percent at 257 pence at 1110 GMT, valuing the business at about 6.04 billion pounds ($ 9.69 billion)
"We still feel that a concrete explanation from management regarding the drivers of Morrison's trading deterioration is lacking, making it difficult for us to think more constructively about the shares," said Citi analyst Al Johnston.
Morrisons confirmed on Monday that company secretary Greg McMahon had left the firm to take up a new role at Mitchells & Butlers. He is the sixth major manager to leave the company in a year.
Morrisons has recruited Casper Meijer as group trading director from Dutch retail group Ahold, though he will not start until June, and promoted Nick Collard to group marketing and customer director from marketing and operations director.
The extent of Morrisons' pain will become clearer as the week goes on: Sainsbury's reports third-quarter sales tomorrow, while Tesco publishes Christmas figures on Thursday.
Morrisons sales slump 2.5%
Morrisons sales slump 2.5%
Saudi Arabia sets global benchmark in AI modernization
- Executives hail the Kingdom’s robust infrastructure and strategic workforce programs
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is emerging as a global leader in artificial intelligence, according to executives from OpenText, one of the world’s largest enterprise information management companies.
With 22 years of international AI experience, Harald Adams, OpenText’s senior vice president of sales for international markets, said the Kingdom’s modernization efforts are now setting a global standard.
“From my perspective, Saudi Arabia is not only leading the modernization towards artificial intelligence in the Middle East, I think it is even not leading it only in the MENA region. I think it is leading it globally,” Adams told Arab News.
In an interview, Adams and George Schembri, vice president and general manager for the Middle East at OpenText, discussed the Kingdom’s significant investments in AI during the inauguration of OpenText’s new regional headquarters in Riyadh.
“So for us (OpenText), from our perspective, it was a strategic decision to move our MENA headquarters to Saudi Arabia because we believe that we will see here a lot of innovation coming out of the country, we can replicate not only to the MENA region, maybe even further to the global level,” Adams said.
The new headquarters, located in the King Abdullah Financial District, will serve as a central hub for OpenText customers and partners across the Middle East. Its opening reflects a broader trend of tech giants relocating to Riyadh, signaling the Kingdom’s rise as a hub for global AI innovation.
Adams attributed Saudi Arabia’s lead in AI modernization to a combination of substantial financial backing, a unified national strategy, and a remarkable pace of execution.
“I mean, a couple of things, because the ingredients in Saudi Arabia are of course, quite interesting. On the one hand side, Saudi Arabia has deep pockets and great ambitions. And they are, I mean, and they are executing fast, yeah,” he said.
“So from that perspective, at the moment, what we see is that there are, especially on the government side, I can’t see any other government organizations globally moving faster into that direction than it is happening in Saudi Arabia. Not in the region, not even on a global level, they are leading the game,” he underlined.
Schembri added, “Saudi’s AI vision is one of the most ambitious in the world, and AI on a national scale is not good without trusted, secured, and governed, and this is where OpenText helps to enable the Saudi organizations to be able to deliver on the 2030 Vision.”
“The Kingdom’s focus on AI and digital transformation creates a powerful opportunity for organizations to unlock value from their information,” Schembri stated.
“With OpenText on the ground in Riyadh, our customers gain direct access to trusted global expertise combined with local insight — enabling them to manage information securely, scale AI with confidence, and compete on a global stage,” he added.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Saudi Arabia ranks 5th globally and 1st in the region for AI growth under the 2025 Global AI Index.
• The Kingdom is also 3rd globally in advanced AI model development, trailing only the US and China.
• AI is projected to contribute $235.2 billion — or 12.4 percent — to Saudi Arabia’s GDP by 2030.
The inauguration of OpenText’s new regional headquarters was attended by Canada’s Minister of International Trade and Economic Development, Maninder Sidhu, and Jean-Philippe Linteau, Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Sidhu emphasized the alignment of Saudi Vision 2030 with Canada’s economic and innovation goals.
“His Highness (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman) and Vision 2030, there is a lot of alignment with Canada, as you know, with the economic collaboration, with his vision around mining, around education, tourism, healthcare, you look at AI and tech, there’s a lot of alignment here at OpenText Grand opening their regional headquarters,” Sidhu told Arab News.
Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions are projected to contribute $235.2 billion — or 12.4 percent — to its GDP by 2030, according to PwC. The Saudi Data and AI Authority, established by a royal decree in 2019, drives the Kingdom’s national data and AI strategy.
One flagship initiative, Humain, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was launched in May 2025 under the Public Investment Fund. It aims to build a full AI stack — from data centers and cloud infrastructure to models and applications — positioning Saudi Arabia as a globally competitive AI hub. The project plans to establish a data center capacity of 1.8 GW by 2030 and 100 GW of AI compute capacity by 2026.
Saudi Arabia is also expanding international partnerships. In May 2025, Humain signed a $5 billion agreement with Amazon Web Services to accelerate AI adoption domestically and globally, focusing on infrastructure, services, and talent development.
The Kingdom ranked fifth globally and first in the Arab region for AI sector growth under the 2025 Global AI Index, and third worldwide in advanced AI model development, behind only the US and China, according to the Stanford University AI Index 2025.
Education is another pillar of Saudi AI strategy. Starting in the 2025-26 academic year, AI will be taught as a core subject across all public school grades, reaching roughly 6.7 million students. The curriculum will cover algorithmic thinking, data literacy, and AI ethics.
OpenText executives emphasized their commitment to supporting Vision 2030 and the national AI strategy through workforce development.
“OpenText has put a lot of investment in the Kingdom, right. We brought cloud to the Kingdom, we’ve opened our headquarters in the Kingdom, we’ve basically hiring Saudis in the Kingdom, We basically building, if you like, an ecosystem to support the Kingdom. And on top of that, what we’re doing is we’re putting a plan together, if you like, a program to look at how we can educate, if you like, the students at universities,” Schembri said.
“So this is something that we are looking into, we are basically investigating and to see how we can support the Saudi nationals when they come into the workplace. And I’m really excited. I have Harry who is, our leadership who’s supporting this program.”
“It’s something that we are putting together. It’ll take some effort. So it’s still in play because we want to make sure what we put it basically delivers on what we're trying to achieve based on the vision of Saudi,” he added.
“The younger generation is sooner or later either working for us or maybe for a partner or for maybe for a customer. So that’s why we are to 100 percent committed to enable all of that,” Adams said.
