Tesco (TSCO.L), Britain"s biggest retailer, raised its full-year earnings forecast on Wednesday after the unmatched scale of its store and online operations helped it outperform rivals in the first half and beat expectations with a 16.6% jump in profit. British retailers are battling supply chain disruptions and labour shortages. Supermarkets also face tough comparisons against record sales during COVID-19 lockdowns. Tesco, however, increased sales in the period. "We"ve had a strong six months; sales and profit have grown ahead of expectations, and we"ve outperformed the market," CEO Ken Murphy said. "With various different challenges currently affecting the industry, the resilience of our supply chain and the depth of our supplier partnerships has once again been shown to be a key asset." He told reporters the company "maintained great availability" during the half. Tesco said the strong performance had enabled it to cut net debt by 1.7 billion pounds ($2.3 billion) since February, and it could now afford to start a multi-year share buyback, with the first 500 million pounds to be bought by October 2022. It also paid an interim dividend of 3.2 pence, in line with a year ago. Tesco shares were up 4.4% at 1015 GMT, taking 2021 gains to 14.3%. Murphy denied the buyback was a tactic to ward off potential private equity bidders. "This isn"t defensive by any means, this is completely, as far as we"re concerned, part of business as usual," he said Morrisons, Britain"s No. 4 supermarket group, is being taken over by U.S. private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, while shares in No. 2 Sainsbury"s have been buoyed by takeover speculation. No. 3 Asda was purchased by the Issa brothers and TDR Capital earlier this year.