Tesco share price: One chart showing the rise, fall – and rise again? – of a retail empire
Is turning around a supertanker really this easy? Tesco's share price rebounded more than nine per cent this morning after the retailer posted results showing Christmas sales fell a mere 2.9 per cent. Admittedly, that's hardly an impressive performance – but it's better than analysts had expected.
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It's an improvement on the same time in 2014, when it issued a profit warning as its market share shrank to 28.7 per cent. Months before, profits had dropped more than 50 per cent due to one-off charges.
The year culminated in the discovery of a £263m accounting black hole, when new Tesco chief executive, Dave Lewis, had barely got his feet under the table before he found out it had been overstating its profits.
Shares ended 2014 at 189p, 42 per cent lower than the 330p they had started at in January.
Will 2015 be the year the supermarket gets its house in order? With Lewis already bringing in a new UK chief executive in the form of ex-Halfords boss Matt Davies and a new chairman on his or her way, the supermarket is at the very least making a fresh start.