Tesco Resumes Dividend Payments; 1st Half Pretax Profit Rises Eight-Fold
October 04 2017 - 3:13AM
Dow Jones News
By Dimitrios Kontos
Tesco PLC (TSCO.LN) reported Wednesday an eight-fold rise in
first-half pretax profit and returned to the dividend list after a
three-year hiatus.
The U.K.'s biggest grocer by market share made a pretax profit
of 562 million pounds ($744.5 million) for the 26 weeks ended Aug.
26, compared with a pretax profit of GBP71 million a year
earlier.
Pretax profit stripping out exceptional items was GBP575
million, compared with GBP353 million for the same period in fiscal
2017, beating analysts' consensus forecasts of GBP496.3
million.
Group revenue rose to GBP28.3 billion, compared with GBP27.34
billion a year earlier, with comparable sales in the U.K. and
Ireland growing 2.1%. Goldman Sachs had forecast revenue of GBP27.8
billion for the period.
The supermarket chain declared an interim dividend of 1.0 pence
per share, its first payout since December 2014, as the board had
sought to reduce costs.
The company said its pension deficit fell to GBP2.4 billion. The
deficit had risen to GBP5.5 billion at February 2017 due to the
reduction in bond yields following the U.K.'s vote to leave the
European Union.
Tesco added that it has reduced its capital expenditure due to
improved efficiency and it now expects it to remain within a range
of GBP1.1 billion to GBP1.4 billion annually.
Write to Dimitrios Kontos at dimitrios.kontos@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 04, 2017 02:58 ET (06:58 GMT)
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