Fashion sales rise at Tesco as full-price shines

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Oct 4, 2017

British supermarket chain Tesco has unveiled its results for the second half of the year, revealing strong growth in clothing sales during the period.

The company’s fashion offering includes women’s, men’s and children’s clothing under the brand name F&F. It said like-for-like clothing sales increased by 3.5% during the first half, outperforming overall like-for-like sales which increased by 2.2%.
 
This was boosted by an 84% increase in full price clothing sales, attributed to the quality of the range and strength of the F&F brand. Back to School shopping also contributed to the performance with sales up 13% year-on-year.

The period included Tesco’s seventh consecutive quarter of growth, with group sales increasing by 3.3% to £25.2bn and profit before tax growing by £491m to £562m.

The company was able to offset cost inflation by implementing a savings strategy, and benefitted from a 2.6% foreign exchange translation due to the ongoing sterling weakness.

Chief executive Dave Lewis said the company is continuing to make “strong progress”.

“Sales are up, profits are up, cash generation continues to strengthen and net debt levels are less than half what they were when we started our turnaround three years ago. All of this is possible because of the focus we have placed on serving shoppers a little better every day. Our offer is more competitive and more customers are shopping at Tesco.”

The company will pay an interim dividend of 1p per share, reflecting “our confidence that we can build on our strong performance to date and in doing so, create long-term, sustainable value for all of our stakeholders.”