UK supermarket Morrisons' profit hurt by price war

LONDON, March 10 (Reuters) - Morrisons, Britain's fourth biggest grocer, reported an expected fall in annual profit on Thursday, as the industry's brutal price war took its toll.

The Bradford, northern England, based group, which trails market leader Tesco (Xetra: 852647 - news) , Sainsbury (Amsterdam: SJ6.AS - news) 's and Wal-Mart's Asda in annual sales, said it made an underlying pretax profit before one off items of 302 million pounds ($429 million) in the year to Jan. 31.

That compares to analysts' average forecast of 307 million pounds and the 413 million pounds it made in the 2014-15 year.

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) represents a fourth straight year of decline and a nine year low.

The firm reiterated its turnaround will take time but said in the medium term it expected an incremental uplift in underlying profit from the opportunities it has identified within online, manufacturing, wholesale, popular and useful services, and from lower interest costs. ($1 = 0.7047 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; editing by Sarah Young)