Tesco chief executive Philip Clarke said: "The large stores we have are great and we are doing a lot of work to make them more vibrant and relevant for today's customers, but we won't need many more of them because growth in future will be multichannel - a combination of big stores, local convenience stores and online." Further writedowns totalling £495 million were booked on its operations in Europe and Tesco has also posted a £115 million provision for mis-selling payment protection insurance. The writedowns dragged Tesco's group profits down 52 per cent, from £4 billion the previous year to £1.96 billion though underlying profits excluding writedowns fell 14.5 per cent to £3.5 billion. Group revenues for the year rose 1.3 per cent to £72.3 billion. Tesco said its UK turnaround plans remain on track, and the final quarter of the financial year was the best like-for-like performance in three years, up 0.5 per cent, though a slowdown on the 1.8 per cent sales rise reported over the Christmas period.