poundland has managed to raise its share price. they sold shares for the first time in march. >> thank you very much. let's keep the conversation going on retail and dig a little deeper. and the story behind poundland. richard, thanks for coming in. can we believe that is true? a discount business, what he was telling us jim mccarthy, it seems that they win in all environments. they have done well out of the recession and subsequent recovery. now he is trying to tell us that as the u.k. economy recovers, he will do well because footfall might increase. >> the evidence from the past shows that when you do give it up -- get an upturn, people aspire to shop in better shops. i think the discount arena will suffer in an upturn. it is worth remembering that it is not just low prices that they are successful for. it is about value for money. across the whole retail scene. when you get an upturn, that perception of what constitutes value for money does change. >> it is interesting to talk about discounters. when you put them all together,

he is the chief executive of poundland. joining us today. >> good morning. >> you have had a good year, sales up by 13.3%. the almost cracked a billion pounds. can you keep this going? is this sustainable? >> yes, we think so. we opened 70 stores last year. we have a strong pipeline of new stores for this year in the u.k. just over 500 stores in total. we know that we have a thousand that the market will take in the u.k. not only that, of course, we have opened our first shop in spain. that was yesterday. we are very happy that we can grow our store numbers and meet the needs of our consumers. tummy a bit more about the international expansion plan. poundland works well as a name in britain. euroland is in the cards. >> in 2011, we launched a new format, deals and we couldn't call it foundland because they deal in the euro. wels is a popular name and knew that would transfer across to europe. we have done very well in ireland. it has to do all the investment, made money in the first year which is unusual when you enter a ne

poundland rising 18% in the first quarter and the company issuing a confident outlook for the rest of the year. the underlying adjusted eps, if you want to know those numbers, rising 25%. let's take a look at the bond markets this morning. interesting to see what happened in the u.s. ten-year yesterday. six basis points higher in terms of the yield in the trading session. you have to wonder about expectations for the bond markets. 1.6%, they expect this yield by year-end, bringing that significantly lower from 2.25%. quick check on the foreign exchange markets. quickly now, we have the dollar seeing a bit of a drop yesterday after the adp data. similar story today. i think suspended for euro/dollar as we head towards mario draghi. will he seen on further strength of the euro. pmi expected to ease a little bit. but after the surprise we got on the manufacturing data this week, you have to wonder whether that could surprise to the upside, too. let's get a check in on what's going on in the asian session this morning. i guess you have to expect ecb, payrolls keeping investors there, pois