Sainsbury's reports second straight year of profit decline
LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) - British supermarket Sainsbury's beat forecasts for full year underlying profit but still reported a second straight year of decline, hurt by an ongoing industry price war.
Sainsbury's, which has shown greater resilience to competition from German discounters Aldi and Lidl than its traditional rivals - market leader Tesco, Asda and Morrisons - made an underlying pretax profit of 587 million pounds ($853 million) in the year to March 12.
That compares to analysts' average forecast of 574 million pounds and 681 million pounds made in the 2014-15 year.
The firm, which last month agreed a 1.4 billion pounds takeover of Argos-owner Home Retail, said it expected the market to remain competitive for the foreseeable future. ($1 = 0.6879 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton)
