By Matteo Castia

Tesco PLC reported Wednesday a higher pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2021 on rising revenue, and said that it has appointed Tate & Lyle PLC's Imran Nawaz as its new chief financial officer.

The U.K.'s largest grocer by market share made a pretax profit of 551 million pounds ($709.4 million) for the six months ended Aug. 29, compared with GBP428 million in the year-earlier period.

The company said it has faced GBP553 million of coronavirus-related costs.

Revenue rose to GBP28.72 billion from GBP28.51 billion the prior year.

The board declared an interim dividend of 3.20 pence, up from the 2.65 pence a year earlier. In April, Tesco said it would use part of the proceedings of its Asian business disposal to pay a special dividend. The company reiterated Wednesday that it intends to return around GBP5.00 billion to shareholders by way of a special dividend.

The company said Mr. Nawaz will join in April 2021. He was CFO at food-and-drink ingredients supplier Tate & Lyle.

Write to Matteo Castia at matteo.castia@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 07, 2020 02:37 ET (06:37 GMT)

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