Tesco Ireland has reported its first rise in sales in nearly four years helped by a strong Christmas trade.
The supermarket chain posted a 1 per cent increase in like-for-like sales for the three months to the end of February. This marked the retailer’s first quarterly rise in sales here since 2012.
The company, which operates 149 stores in the Republic, has been struggling to cope with aggressive price discounting by rivals. Last year, it was eclipsed as the top retailer in the Irish market by Supervalu.
Despite the quarterly rise, the latest set of numbers for its Irish arm show full-year sales were down by 1.9 per cent with the company generating revenues of €2.5 billion.
“We’ve listened closely to our customers and really focused on investing in the things that matter most to them,” Tesco Ireland boss Andrew Yaxley said.
“ We’ve lowered the prices of over 900 every day products as part of our Staying Down campaign, we’ve improved our range and availability, and we have more colleagues available to help customers at the busiest times,” he added.
As a whole, Tesco cheered “significant progress” in its turnaround as it returned to full-year profit and unveiled its first quarter of sales growth for three years in Britain.
The chain posted bottom-line pre-tax profits of £162 million for the year to February 27th against losses of £6.3 billion the previous year — one of the biggest losses in UK corporate history.
It also reported a 0.9 per cent rise in UK like-for-like sales in its fourth quarter, which marked its first full quarter of growth since 2013, as the group’s recovery under boss Dave Lewis gathers pace.
Mr Lewis said: “We have made significant progress against the priorities we set out in October 2014.” He added: “We set out to start rebuilding profitability whilst reinvesting in the customer offer, and we have done this. More customers are buying more things more often at Tesco.”
But he added the group continued to face a “challenging, deflationary and uncertain market”. Its return to the black comes after a grim year when massive property writedowns sent it slumping more than £6 billion into the red.
On an underlying basis, the latest set of results showed group operating profits of £944 million, up 1.1 per cent on £940 million the previous year, when it reported a 68 per cent slump in trading profits.
Additional reporting: PA
