British retailer Tesco posted a 17 per cent rise in full-year underlying profit today.
Tesco, which has 93 multi-format stores in Ireland and employs some 11,800 people, does not publish separate figures for its operation in Ireland.
However, it was reported this morning that Tesco's Irish arm recorded sales of almost €2.5 billion for the year to the end of February, an increase of some 16 per cent on the previous year.
The parent group said it would release £5 billion (€7.2 billion) cash from its property portfolio.
However, as rivals J. Sainsbury and Morrison Supermarkets show stronger-than-expected trading data, Tesco's core like-for-like sales slipped to 4.9 per cent for the fourth quarter as a whole from 5.7 per cent over Christmas.
Tesco said pretax, pre-exceptional profit for the 52 weeks to February 25th, 2006, was £2.21 billion compared with £1.894 billion last year.
Amid shareholder pressure on the company to realise some of the value of its fixed assets, Tesco said the market value of its freehold property was estimated to be 50 per cent higher than book value. The net book value of Tesco's fixed assets is £15.9 billion - mostly freehold property valued at historic cost - Tesco said.
By extending an existing programme of sale-and-leaseback deals, Tesco said it would free up to £5 billion pounds over the coming five years, £1.5 billion of which will be returned to shareholders in the form of a share buyback.