Trading Statement

Tesco PLC
19 June 2007

                                   TESCO PLC                                    

                        FIRST QUARTER TRADING STATEMENT                         

                           GROUP SALES GROW BY 10.0%                            


Chief Executive, Terry Leahy commented:

'We've made a good start to the year across the group. International is
delivering particularly strong growth; pushing on well with both new store
development and the integration of the stores we acquired last year - and our
plans to open in the United States later this year are well on track. The UK has
made solid progress in the first quarter with good growth in our core food
categories and further investment in improving our offer for customers -
including last week's announcement of £270 million of price cuts.'

GROUP SALES

Group sales for the thirteen weeks ending 26th May 2007 increased by 10.0%,
driven by all four parts of our strategy. Our expanding international operations
have delivered a strong start to the year, the core UK business has shown solid
growth, our non-food ranges - helped by the launch of Tesco Direct - have
performed well in more challenging markets and our retailing services are
continuing to attract new customers.

STRONG INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE

International sales were up 24.6% at constant exchange rates and by 22.4% at
actual rates. This included a particularly strong performance in Asia, where
sales grew by 32% at constant rates, benefiting for the first time from the
consolidation of our operations in China. We are on track to deliver a
substantial programme of new store openings this year, which will provide more
than 7 million square feet of new selling space in International. At the same
time, the conversion of the acquired Leader Price stores in Poland and the Makro
business in Malaysia is going well.

SOLID GROWTH IN UK BUSINESS

We have made a solid start to the year in the UK, with total sales excluding
petrol growing by 8.0%. On the same basis, like-for-like sales for the quarter
increased by 4.7% - with inflation of 1.8%, driven by higher market prices for
commodities and seasonal fresh foods. Although food category performance has
been strong, our rate of growth in non-food has eased in more subdued markets.
Net new stores, excluding petrol, contributed 3.3%. Including petrol,
like-for-like sales grew by 3.4% and total sales grew by 6.3%.

FINANCIAL POSITION*

Operationally the business is performing according to plan with sufficient
financing in place to achieve planned growth. Both cash flow and capital
expenditure are in line with budget and we are on track to achieve our store
opening targets.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS*

In line with our Preliminary Announcement of 17th April 2007, our share buy-back
programme continues to return value to shareholders. A further £204m worth of
shares have been repurchased since the February 2007 year end, bringing the
total value repurchased through the current programme to £586m.

On 21st March 2007, Tesco announced the formation of a property joint venture
with The British Land Company PLC and sold assets to the joint venture with a
fair value of approximately £650m and a net book value of approximately £350m.


Contacts:-

Investor Relations:     Steve Webb             01992 644 800

Press:                  Jonathan Church        01992 646 606
                        Angus Maitland         020 7379 5151


* These additional disclosures form our Interim Management Statement which has
been included as part of our adoption of the Transparency Directive. This is
being implemented in the UK through provisions in the Companies Bill and FSA
rules. The aim of this Directive is to enhance transparency on EU capital
markets by establishing rules for the disclosure of periodic financial reports
and of major shareholdings for companies whose securities are admitted to
trading on a regulated market in the EU.

 

                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange