Essay on Tesco vs Sainsbury's Comparative Financial Analysis

In accounting there is much to be learned, about the financial aspects of a business. In the past five weeks I have learned the importance of financial reports and how they relate to the success of an establishment. These reports may include balance sheets and income statements, which help accountants and the public grasp the overall financial condition of a company. The information in these reports is really significant to, managers, owners, employees, and investors. Managers of a business can take and deduce financial

Sainsbury’s have a long term goal to deliver their products and keep their customers happy. One of their objectives is to make life easier for their customers by offering products with good quality and service with a fair price. This also makes the customers happy and makes them want to shop

Sainsbury’s goal is to reflect they commitment to meeting customers’ needs; however, they want to shop food, clothing, general merchandise and services also they vision is to be trusted retailer where people love to work and shop. They strategy plan is to know they consumers better than anyone else, be there for them whenever they need them also offering great products and services at fair prices. They colleagues make the difference; they value makes them different.

J Sainsbury's aims and objectives Their business is now focused very much on Sainsbury’s Supermarkets and Sainsbury’s Bank following the sale of Shaw’s

Tesco is one of the most famous stores in the UK with it being our biggest sales retailer earning billions in profits. The statistics of the supermarket are extremely impressive with over 330,000 staff employed, being the third largest supermarket, over 16 million Clubcard users in the UK and it being said that one pound in every seven has been spent at Tesco. All of this used to just be a small stall in East London when it was created by Jack Cohen in 1919 simply selling groceries making a profit of just £1 on the first day. Five years later, Cohen purchased a shipment of tea and Tesco became a brand with its first store opening another five years later, in 1929, in North London. Tesco is now not only just a grocery store, it also sells petrol (becoming the largest independent petrol retailer in the UK), insurance, has its own bank, credit cards, loans along with products such as its own clothing line F&F, games consoles, televisions and sports equipment. However, in 2014 Tesco had a shocking downfall when it had been revealed that they had exaggerated their half-year profit forecast by a massive £250 million.

I have researched the company’s financial reports. There will be a financial analysis of the company comparing its present to past two years’ performance and to the performance of its major competitors.

As the financial analyst of the company, this report is written in respect to how the financial position of the company can be improved. This report is aimed for the senior management team.

To make further comment we need to investigate further by looking at industry, competitors and economy. There may be other factors causing this ratio to decrease such as a general decline gross margin profit in retail sector affecting all companies, high inflation causing less demand, increasing competition etc. We should do further investigation to make further comment.

Within this report, diligent focus will be shown to the financial year of 2010 and the final year of

Sainsbury’s have to ensure they make changes regarding customer needs as quickly as possible. This is important because if Sainsbury’s don’t act on customers’ needs they will possibly decline and lose their current market position because customers will go to its competitors such as Asda or Morrison’s etc. This shows that Sainsbury’s have to make decisions as soon as possible in order to maintain their position in the market and to be better than its competitors through improvement. This will also contribute to Sainsbury’s keeping a good reputation which will also help to attract new customers.

Sainsbury's continued their programme of change aimed at releasing the talents of their colleagues, helping them to focus on the customer, and restoring their pride in working for Sainsbury's. It's clear to them that new and exciting working environments add to this pride. This will grow as they increase the pace of their programme of developing and extending stores. It is also why they're keen to tell everybody about their acknowledged successes, such as organics and ready meals, their record in protecting the environment and supporting farmers, and new initiatives, such as their innovations in e-commerce.

There are 92,796 grocery stores in the UK and the market value increase by 19.5% in the last 5 years and according to IGD forecast the UK grocery market should reach £203bn by 2019. But what we can see in the figure 1 that from 2009 to 2014 annual grow in the grocery market start decreasing from 4.9% in 2009 to 2.8% in 2014. One of the reason for this is difficult economic conditions which had an effect for consumer spending. Consumers choose to spend less money on food by buying less food or by looking for cheaper places. Retail market is diversified into three main sectors: Hypermarket and superstores which accounts for 42.3% of retail market, convenience stores 21.4% and small supermarkets 20.3% (Figure 3). So about 84% of sales are done in these three sectors. The biggest 4 retail chains in UK are: Tesco which takes 28.7% market share, Asda has 17.3%, Sainsbury’s 16.6% and Morrison’s 11%. (Figure 2) So, if we will sum up 4 biggest retail market chains we will have about ¾ of market share. Finally, a strong characteristic of this sector is competition with price wars and a

Globalization involves a variety of links expanding and tightening a web of political, economic and cultural inter-connections. Most attention has been devoted to merchandise trade as it has had the most immediate (or most visible) consequences, but capital, in and of itself, has come to play an arguably even larger role than the trade in material goods. Human movements also link previously separate communities. Finally, there is the cultural connection. All the individual data would indicate that we are undergoing a process of compression of international time and space and an intensification of international relations. The separation of production and consumption that is the heart of modern capitalism appears to have

Tesco was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen, when he purchased the shipment of tea from T.E Stockwell and later in 1924 combined the initial of the names (TES) with the first two letters of his surname (CO). The first TESCO store was opened in Burnt Oak, Middlesex in 1929. Tesco is now operating in 14 different countries around the globe with almost 5000 stores worldwide and it is one of the largest retailers around the world. According to Kantar worldpanel, 2012 Tesco covers almost 30% of the market share in the UK.

The financial statements are very useful to all this group of user. Explain each of them;