After losing a monstrous £6.3 billion last year, mainly in property write-downs, the announcement that Tescos made a modest £162 million in the year to the end of February, might have been seen as mild good news but not when accompanied by future growth warnings.

CEO David Lewis, onboard since 2014, has been busy closing non profitable stores and pulling out of non-core businesses, such as their South Korean business Homeplus, that added £4.2 billion to the bank balance. However his warning that profits will not be rising in a straight line, spooked the market enough to cause Tesco's shares to drop by a massive 8%, having gained 31% this year on very public recovery activity.

Their world is supermarkets and the feeling is that they haven't as yet got to grips with the price war brought to them by Aldi and Lidl as well as their other competitors and when the surplus staff, premises and other businesses have gone, they will still be involved in the same price war and it is not clear what they will do as yet to win at least the occasional battle.