Financial summary

A summary of the reported financial results for the year ended 29 January 2011 is set out below.

A reconciliation of statutory profit to adjusted profit is set out below:

Profit and EPS including all exceptional items for the year ended 29 January 2011 is set out below:

Overview

Total sales grew 0.5% on a constant currency basis and declined by 0.5% to £10.4 billion on a reported rate basis. During the year, an additional 21 net new stores were opened taking the store network to 826 (excluding 30 Turkey JV stores). This includes the impact of closing three stores across the Group. On a like-for-like (‘LFL’) basis, Group sales were down 0.9%.

Retail profit before exceptional items grew by 14.7% to £762 million, and by 11.0% to £756 million including exceptional items.

The net interest charge for the year was £27 million, down £30 million on the prior year driven by significantly lower average net debt levels and lower interest rates.

Profit before tax grew by 18.6% to £671 million as a result of improved trading in the year and a reduction in net finance costs. On a more comparable basis, which removes the impact of one-off items and fair value remeasurements, adjusted pre-tax profit grew by 22.5% to £670 million.

Profit for the year grew by 27.5% to £491 million. This resulted in the Group recording a basic EPS of 21.0p which is up 4.5p (+27.3%) in the year.