Tesco makes £1.4 billion profit - In its half-year

• Tesco has announced its half-year pre-tax profits of £1.42 billion, an increase of 1.5 per cent on a year earlier.
• The group generated sales of more than £1 billion a week, coming to a total of £30.4 billion.
  Like-for-like sales rose 2.7 per cent in the UK, which is slower than the growth achieved by its rivals such as Sainsbury's.
• However, the firm says recent moves to enhance its Clubcard customer reward strategy are paying off, and says it has seen a "significant improvement" in its performance compared with its competitors.
• The company also announced that it has created 6,500 jobs in the six month period, while chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said that Tesco was "well-placed for the global recovery".
• The supermarket chain's statement said its strategy had "delivered pleasing growth in challenging times".
• Finance director Laurie McIlwee said falling inflation had taken the shine off the like-for-like figures, as the company passed a comparative period last year of high commodity prices.
• He said Tesco had now started to see its sales figures run at around the same rate as the rest of the industry: "It has actually converged and performance is much stronger relative to the rest of the market," he said.
• He added that Tesco usually does better in a period of deflation because of the company's "everyday" value products.

By www.SUPERSTARRAJNI.com