The British supermarket Sainsbury’s, which last month agreed a 1.4 billion pounds takeover of Argos-owner Home Retail, 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 market is competitive, and it will remain so for the foreseeable future,” said Chief Executive Mike Coupe on Wednesday. “We believe we have the right strategy in place.”

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