Tesco, Business, UK news, Supermarkets, Retail industry Business | The Guardian
Having exited most of its overseas adventures the retailer is an advertisement for the virtues of sticking to the knittingIt is 17 years since the management of Tesco suffered a severe case of hubris and thought they could conquer the US. A supposedly small experiment with a format called Fresh & Easy ended in an embarrassing retreat and a near-£2bn write-off. And it is 10 years since the great accounting scandal and the bullying of suppliers, a crisis era mixed up with wacky diversions into music streaming (Blinkbox), Android tablets (Hudl) and coffee shops (Harris + Hoole).The contrast with today could not be starker. Thursday’s strong half-year numbers were accompanied by a forecast that the full-year tally for “retail adjusted operating profit”, Tesco’s slightly odd preferred metric, will be £2.9bn, about £100m better than the last time it spoke. Given the group’s recent habit of underpromising, nobody will be surprised if the round number of £3bn is reached. Continue reading…
Having exited most of its overseas adventures the retailer is an advertisement for the virtues of sticking to the knitting
It is 17 years since the management of Tesco suffered a severe case of hubris and thought they could conquer the US. A supposedly small experiment with a format called Fresh & Easy ended in an embarrassing retreat and a near-£2bn write-off. And it is 10 years since the great accounting scandal and the bullying of suppliers, a crisis era mixed up with wacky diversions into music streaming (Blinkbox), Android tablets (Hudl) and coffee shops (Harris + Hoole).
The contrast with today could not be starker. Thursday’s strong half-year numbers were accompanied by a forecast that the full-year tally for “retail adjusted operating profit”, Tesco’s slightly odd preferred metric, will be £2.9bn, about £100m better than the last time it spoke. Given the group’s recent habit of underpromising, nobody will be surprised if the round number of £3bn is reached.
