Morrisons suffers first quarterly sales fall since 2016

LONDON (Reuters) - Morrisons , Britain's No. 4 grocer, reported a 5.3% rise in first-half profit, though quarterly underlying sales fell for the first time since 2016, partly reflecting tough comparative numbers with last year when sales were boosted by a hot summer.For the six months to Aug. 4, the Bradford, northern England, based company made an pretax profit before one-off items of 198 million pounds. That compared to analysts' average forecast of 192 million pounds and 188 million pounds..