sharp fall in annual profits<\/a> due to last year’s cyber incident, as the retailer said the profit growth that returned in the second half is likely to continue this coming year.<\/p>\nAdjusted pre-tax profit for the FTSE 100 grocery and clothing chain came in at \u00a3671.4 million for the 52 weeks to 28 March, down 23.8% from a year earlier. Statutory pre-tax profit fell 28.8% to \u00a3364.6 million.<\/p>\n
The cyber incident led to \u00a3131.3 million of related costs, while insurance proceeds of \u00a3100 million were recorded centrally within adjusted profit.<\/p>\n
For the new financial year, profit growth is expected to resume, helped by further progress in the transformation programme and investment in value, quality and digital capabilities.<\/p>\n
7.24am: Inflation eases <\/p>\n
More details on the UK CPI report.<\/p>\n
Annual headline CPI inflation slowed to 2.8% in April from 3.3% in March, below the consensus forecast of 3.0%.<\/p>\n
Core CPI inflation, which excludes food, petrol and other more volatile prices, eased to 2.5% from 3.1%, also below the consensus estimate of 2.6%.<\/p>\n
Services CPI inflation, a measure the Bank of England likes to monitor for the stickiness of inflation, decelerated sharply to 3.2% from 4.5% in March. The consensus was\u00a03.5%.<\/p>\n
This largely reflected Rachel Reeves’s arsenal of measures in the autumn Budget, including an energy bill support package that reduced tariffs and\u00a0removed\u00a0green levies from energy bills, combined with lower global wholesale energy prices before the conflict in the Middle East, which together more than offset large\u00a0water bill hikes.<\/p>\n
ONS chief economist Grant Fitzner says it was “a notable fall in annual inflation”.<\/p>\n
“Smaller rises in water and sewage bills and Vehicle Excise Duty than seen last year also helped pull the rate down,” he says. “Food prices, particularly for chocolate and meat products, and the price of package holidays drove inflation down further.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese were only partially offset by a further increase in petrol and diesel prices, and an uptick in the cost of clothing and footwear.<\/p>\n
“The annual cost of both raw materials and goods leaving factories continued to rise, driven again by higher crude oil and petrol prices.”<\/p>\n
7.17am: FTSE 100 to start in red <\/p>\n
The FTSE 100 and other European markets are expected to start in red on Wednesday as market sentiment remains gloomy in the face of a lack of progress around Middle Eastern peace talks.<\/p>\n
A decline of 41\u00a0points is expected at the open, after the London index finished 6.8 points lower at\u00a010,330.55 the day before.<\/p>\n
Fresh from the Office for National Statistics was news that UK consumer price inflation eased to 2.8% in April from 3.3% March, almost entirely thanks to the energy price cap that came in last month.<\/p>\n
Overnight on Wall Street, selling dominated as the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 both dropped 0.7%, and the Nasdaq slid 0.8% as government bonds continued to exert pressure.<\/p>\n
Like North London, after Arsenal won the Premier League for the first time in 22 years, Asian markets are red this morning, with the\u00a0Nikkei down\u00a01.4%, the Hang Seng sliding 0.7% and India’s\u00a0Sensex 0.1%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FTSE 100 Live: European stocks to start in red, UK inflation eased last month Proactive uses images sourced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2195,4629,20600,6224,320,1515,5,6,12817],"class_list":["post-41181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-arsenal","tag-consensus-estimate","tag-cpi-inflation","tag-ftse","tag-ftse-100","tag-marks-and-spencer","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-utilities"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116605798529829579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"FTSE](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/19ffc011ec2302e8bcdd864a9a7c31dc.jpeg\")
FTSE 100 Live: European stocks to start in red, UK inflation eased last month Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock 8.15am: FTSE lacks pep at open <\/p>\n