Tesco paints rosy p&l picture
Tesco.com, the world's biggest online grocery store, is on course to become profitable by next year, finance director Clare Swindell told the Finance Directors' Forum last week.
The web arm of the supermarket chain told the City 18 months ago that it would be profitable in 2002 and Swindell told delegates that it was on target to do so.
And she said that the virtual store, which only accounts for around 1.5% of the company’s overall sales, would be reporting a profit this year, net of most head office costs.
‘We’re in danger of painting a rosy picture of a dot.com,’ she said, while acknowledging: ‘Reporting a fully-costed p&l is still difficult.
Swindell said Tesco had looked at creating a separate legal entity for its online business but had rejected it partly because of the ‘dot.com tragedy’ of last year.
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