Terry Leahy, Chief Executive, comments: “The breadth of the Group and the strength of our business model have enabled Tesco to deliver another year of double-digit sales, profit and earnings per share growth – in challenging market conditions. We begin the new financial year confidently – with a good start in the UK, excellent progress in our established international markets and promising early performance from our investments in future growth, particularly in the United States, China and Turkey.”
Group : These results are for the 52 weeks ended 23 February 2008, compared with the same period ending in February 2007. Results from our business in China are consolidated in the full-year results for the first time.
Group sales, including VAT, increased by 11.1% to £51.8bn (last year £46.6bn). At constant exchange rates, sales increased by 10.4%.
In April 2006, with our Preliminary Results for 2005/6, and following our transition to IFRS, we introduced an underlying profit measure, which excludes the impact of the volatile non-cash elements of IAS 19, IAS 32 and IAS 39 (principally pension costs and the marking to market of financial instruments). With these Results, the underlying profit measure also excludes the impact of the non-cash element of IAS 17, relating to the impact of annual uplifts in rents and rent free periods. Underlying profit before tax rose to £2,846m in the year (last year £2,545m), an increase of 11.8%.