Tesco recovery fails to overly impress investors

Tesco saw a marginal decline in its Irish performance in its latest financial year, although its group-wide recovery continued.

The British supermarket company yesterday reported underlying group operating profits of £1.28bn (€1.5bn) for the 12 months to the end of February. That was up nearly 30% on the previous year and was marginally ahead of analysts’ expectations. Net debt for the year was cut by 27% and group revenue rose by over 4% to just under £50bn.

However, in Ireland, Tesco saw a 0.1% fall in like-for-like sales. The decline was brought on by a disappointing last quarter, which saw sales fall by 1.3% on a yearly basis. However, the first three quarters of the year saw Tesco Ireland record annualised sales increases of 0.3%, 0.1% and 0.5%.