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by Rachel Robson

‘Come rain or shine, the Tesco juggernaut just keeps rolling on,’ says The Independent’s Jeremy Warner, following the supermarket’s annual results. He goes on to say that on virtually every level, the outcome was ‘outstanding’.

As far as the company’s US venture, Fresh & Easy, is concerned, Wighton says that although ‘some in the press and the City have already written [it] off as a disaster’, its performance so far has in fact ‘been much better than Sir Terry had dared hope for’. Warner goes on to say that overseas profits are now ‘bigger than the whole of Tesco was a decade ago when it embarked on its overseas expansion’, adding that it all ‘sounds almost too good to be true’.

Although Tesco has its sceptics, Warner believes that even in the downturn, there are many reasons for believing that Tesco ‘may remain largely immune’. He points to the conventional wisdom that even in a recession, ‘people have to eat’, while there is some evidence suggesting that as consumers ‘cut back in the round, supermarkets can be major beneficiaries as spending swaps from eating out to eating in, and in non-foods to the cheaper forms of produce found on supermarket shelves.’

Most of all, however, Warner believes that Tesco should remain resilient due to its overseas expansion, which will take the company into growth markets ‘relatively unaffected by the economic malaise of developed economies’. Although the strategy is risky, Warner points out that so far ‘the execution has been close to flawless’.

The Financial Times’ Andrew Hill also believes the supermarket has resilient qualities. ‘Even if Tesco’s non-food offering comes under pressure, it has greater flexibility than specialist retailers to tailor its range, and more firepower than other supermarkets to adjust its food promotions on demand,’ he says. Meanwhile, Warner concludes that eventually something within Tesco will break, but for the time being ‘it remains hard to see where the fault lines of this finely tuned machine might lie.’