Britain's Tesco says coronavirus costs could reach US$1.1b

Tesco's wholesale business is also likely to have been hit hard by the closure of restaurant and cafe customers.

LONDON: Britain's biggest retailer Tesco expects to take a hit of up to 925 million pounds ($1.1 billion) from the costs of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and warned it was unable to give a profit forecast for this financial year.

However, the supermarket group said on Wednesday that if customer behaviour returned to normal by August, it was likely the extra expenses - mainly related to staff and operations costs - would be offset by higher sales and relief from a business tax introduced by the government to help companies.