Tesco says aspiration is full-year profit of 950 mln stg

LONDON, Oct (HKSE: 3366-OL.HK - news) 7 (Reuters) - Britain's biggest retailer Tesco is on track to make an operating profit before one-off items of 950 million pounds in its 2015-16 financial year, effectively matching the previous year's profit, it said on Wednesday.

Tesco (Xetra: 852647 - news) made a trading profit in its 2014-15 year of 1.39 billion pounds ($2.12 billion), which equates to 1.23 billion pounds of operating profit before one-off items, its new headline performance measure.

Stripping out the contribution from Tesco's South Korea operation, which it recently sold, would result in a comparable figure for 2014-15 of 950 million pounds, as South Korea is treated as a discontinued operation.

"We're on track to meet that aspiration (of 950 million pounds), not withstanding that there are some challenges still in the second half of the year," Chief Executive Dave Lewis told reporters. ($1 = 0.6559 pounds) (Reporting by James davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)