19th Jun 2007 07:03
Tesco PLC19 June 2007 TESCO PLC FIRST QUARTER TRADING STATEMENT GROUP SALES GROW BY 10.0% Chief Executive, Terry Leahy commented: "We've made a good start to the year across the group. International isdelivering particularly strong growth; pushing on well with both new storedevelopment and the integration of the stores we acquired last year - and ourplans to open in the United States later this year are well on track. The UK hasmade solid progress in the first quarter with good growth in our core foodcategories and further investment in improving our offer for customers -including last week's announcement of £270 million of price cuts." GROUP SALES Group sales for the thirteen weeks ending 26th May 2007 increased by 10.0%,driven by all four parts of our strategy. Our expanding international operationshave delivered a strong start to the year, the core UK business has shown solidgrowth, our non-food ranges - helped by the launch of Tesco Direct - haveperformed well in more challenging markets and our retailing services arecontinuing to attract new customers. STRONG INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE International sales were up 24.6% at constant exchange rates and by 22.4% atactual rates. This included a particularly strong performance in Asia, wheresales grew by 32% at constant rates, benefiting for the first time from theconsolidation of our operations in China. We are on track to deliver asubstantial programme of new store openings this year, which will provide morethan 7 million square feet of new selling space in International. At the sametime, the conversion of the acquired Leader Price stores in Poland and the Makrobusiness in Malaysia is going well. SOLID GROWTH IN UK BUSINESS We have made a solid start to the year in the UK, with total sales excludingpetrol growing by 8.0%. On the same basis, like-for-like sales for the quarterincreased by 4.7% - with inflation of 1.8%, driven by higher market prices forcommodities and seasonal fresh foods. Although food category performance hasbeen strong, our rate of growth in non-food has eased in more subdued markets.Net new stores, excluding petrol, contributed 3.3%. Including petrol,like-for-like sales grew by 3.4% and total sales grew by 6.3%. FINANCIAL POSITION* Operationally the business is performing according to plan with sufficientfinancing in place to achieve planned growth. Both cash flow and capitalexpenditure are in line with budget and we are on track to achieve our storeopening targets. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS* In line with our Preliminary Announcement of 17th April 2007, our share buy-backprogramme continues to return value to shareholders. A further £204m worth ofshares have been repurchased since the February 2007 year end, bringing thetotal value repurchased through the current programme to £586m. On 21st March 2007, Tesco announced the formation of a property joint venturewith The British Land Company PLC and sold assets to the joint venture with afair value of approximately £650m and a net book value of approximately £350m. Contacts:- Investor Relations: Steve Webb 01992 644 800 Press: Jonathan Church 01992 646 606 Angus Maitland 020 7379 5151 * These additional disclosures form our Interim Management Statement which hasbeen included as part of our adoption of the Transparency Directive. This isbeing implemented in the UK through provisions in the Companies Bill and FSArules. The aim of this Directive is to enhance transparency on EU capitalmarkets by establishing rules for the disclosure of periodic financial reportsand of major shareholdings for companies whose securities are admitted totrading on a regulated market in the EU. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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