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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68776913
The UK's biggest supermarket chain said pre-tax profits hit £2.3bn, up from £882m, while sales rose by 4.4% to £68.2bn in the year to 24 February.
So, sales up by just over 4% whilst profits up nearly three-fold. Is it just me or do I detect rip-off Britain at work here, under the cover of "inflation"?
Stop agreeing with each other, this is a message board not a party political broadcast!
I’m not a fan of Tesco. I don’t like their stores, their meal deals or their clubcards. Shirley Porter’s big council house sell-off for votes still rankles.
However they are making about 3p profit on every £1 of sales. That is not a rip-off or profiteering. Prior to the pandemic most supermarket chains made 2-4% profits on revenue before tax and that had been the case for decades.
Selling food is similar to selling fuel for vehicles. It’s an absolute necessity and if your prices are a bit too high then the consumer will shop elsewhere. That’s why margins are so low compared to, say, tech. Apple, for example, makes annual profits of around $170 billion on sales of $380 billion.
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“Explain it to me?”
Read the annual accounts on www.investegate.co.uk, using the TSCO EPIC code. All publicly available and free. It will explain it to you.
Accounting isn’t difficult: a few rules, three structures to understand (P and L, Cashflow statement and a balance sheet.), and some average arithmetic to interpret it.
Read the accounts backwards though. That is, read the footnotes first for dirty tricks, or clever accountants rule-bending and chicanery, and the first two of three items above should tell you what you need to know. You’ll be bored as an accounting graduate staring out of the window “doing audit” for their first two years but you’ll get it I’m sure.
Accounting isn’t hard. Or you wouldn’t see so
many average IQ dolly birds taking the courses at Uni as you do these days. The clever ones go to the big 4. The really smart ones will work in offshore tax advisory and wealth management. But most of the cattle will be lucky enough to earn a teachers salary before being AI’d out of existence or impregnated by a senior accountant / boss. A high life it is not.
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Why shop at Tesco's then ?, there are other options, including CostCo, ASDA, Coop, Splott market. Lidl / Aldi my goto places when in the UK. Compare the UK to Spain and you will notice how much you are getting ripped off - and how willingly people are allowing themselves to be ripped off.
You have have choices and options, you cant blame Tesco for trying to make money - they are a business - and you are the victim - shop elsewhere. If you dont you are thick - and that is just what they want. Thick customers who cant think for themselves and are willing to give Tesco all your spare cash / credit
Thanks for the update - but you get the idea I'm sure ?
Inflation heading back to 2% , which deserves recognition ..
Time for the government to put pressure on them , sadly that is not easy unless they windfall tax them , I'd call it repayment of the furlough scheme , that kept many afloat ..
To be fair Aldi / Lidl prices are also up and an easy 20%. .
Whats the next Pm and his deputy lady saying about all this ???????????
The explanation is in the BBC article in the OP. ‘Price pressures’ hit margins. Tesco has contracts with growers and suppliers and would have seen its margins squeezed as food price inflation hit 20% in late 2022/early 2023. These latest figures are a return to normal profitability, as you can see in this link from Tesco itself.
https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/r...e-year-record/
I walk/drive past Tesco to shop at Morrisons. I don’t like Tesco’s links to the Tories or their borderline fraudulent deals, or their data-collecting clubcard. They were pioneers of these manipulation techniques and I can’t abide the company.
But as I wrote yesterday, profiteering is very difficult in the grocery business as there are at least 10 large food retail companies in the UK who mainly compete on prices.