Tesco boss Dave Lewis on Wednesday downplayed City suggestions he might move on as the grocer’s turnaround is near complete.
He said: “We’re four years into the turnaround. We have met or we are about to meet our targets this year. There are untapped value opportunities in Tesco and there’s an awful lot more that we can do.”
Lewis was parachuted into Tesco in 2014, revived the retailer in the wake of its accounting scandal and struck a £3.7 billion deal to buy cash-and-carry wholesaler Booker.
He said on Wednesday he had further strategic plans, which he will outline in June, potentially including launching a share buyback.
The supermarkets chain posted an 11.2% sales rise to £63.9 billion, with earnings boosted by Booker, while profits jumped 28.8% to £1.7 billion, the best results under Lewis.
Same-store sales were up 2.9%, including 1.7% at Tesco, ahead of rivals Morrisons at 0.6% and Asda at 1%, and 11.1% at Booker.
Tesco made cost savings of £532 million in the year, going towards its £1.5 billion target by 2020. Some of these will come from a fresh wave of job cuts, which emerged in January.
Lewis, who earned the moniker Drastic Dave when cutting costs at Unilever, said that although they are consulting with 9000 staff, he only expects about half of those to be redundancies, with the rest moving to other roles. However, more cuts could follow.
He added: “[The cuts] are a reflection of change in customer behaviour. It’s very impactful when we make a change like this… [there] will be more changes, we’ll work them through.”
