British supermarket Sainsbury's on Wednesday posted its first annual underlying profit fall since 2005, hurt by an industry price war that shows no sign of abating.

Sainsbury's, which trails market leader Tesco and Wal-Mart's Asda, said it made an underlying pretax profit of 681 million pounds ($1 billion) in the year to March 14.

That was ahead of analysts' average forecast of 659 million pounds but was down 14.7 percent from the 798 million pounds made in the 2013-14 year.

After booking 753 million pounds of exceptional charges, mainly impairment charges on existing stores and the property pipeline announced alongside half-year results in November, Sainsbury's posted a statutory pretax loss of 72 million pounds.

The firm said it was making good progress with its strategy, with its investment in price and quality showing encouraging early signs of volume and transaction growth.