The Grocer headed to Carnaby Street this morning for Asda’s Q3 results - which CEO Andy Clarke revealed were up 0.3%. Not especially eye-catching figures, but these days anything above flat is something of a relief for many retailers, and everyone knows it.

So business quickly moved on to more interesting topics, such as controversial Christmas ads, the stellar potential of multi-channel retailing and the one thing that really made the room go quiet, the delicate issue of tax.

The reaction to Asda’s already infamous Christmas ad has been undeniably interesting, whatever your point of view. But what went off like a rocket seems to have fizzled out into a damp squib already - to such an extent that a laid-back Clarke felt able to call it a “great ad” without fear of criticism from the assembled hacks. Like the modest like-for-like sales rise, no-one pushed him on it.

However, Clarke was quickly upright when the questions about tax began. A recent Sunday Times report shone the tax spotlight, recently fired up by the Starbucks controversy, on Asda’s payments to Walmart - which reduce the amount of tax it pays in the UK.

Clarke was still assured, but thinking hard, as if one word out of place would result in a storm of negative headlines. Which it probably would.

As such, he went little beyond describing the amount of tax Asda pays as “significant”, and would not be drawn on the amount of tax other US-owned companies pay. But the tax questions kept coming, and “significant” became “appropriate” before incoming CFO Richard Mayfield stepped in with some cold hard figures, confirming that Asda paid £163m in corporation tax in 2011 and a total of over £886m in the past five years. No doubt these numbers will now be forensically dissected to offer some context.

Mayfield added that the payments to Walmart over the past five years (totalling £780m) were primarily for IT-related projects. No wonder it’s cost them a few quid: by the sound of things Asda has been working Walmart, and its hotshot e-commerce team in San Francisco, hard. So hard that the key theme of today’s briefing was the progress it has made in multi-channel.

Nothing new in realising the potential of multi-channel, you might think. Everyone has a handle on things like the golden thread that links Facebook fans, click-through rates and sales conversions, don’t they? But Asda is clearly smitten by multi-channel and whether it’s mobile, click & collect, internet or in-store Wi-Fi, Asda wants us to know that it is all over it. And with stats like 76% of online George orders being collected in stores, with the same customers adding a few things to their basket while they are there, or 10,000 online shoppers clicking through to Asda Direct following a Facebook discussion about Furbys, you can see why Asda is in love with the clicks and bricks combo.

Multi-channel is COO Judith McKenna’s baby, and she detailed numerous initiatives Asda has put in place to maximise the multichannel opportunity - although she stayed tight-lipped on one. But you can read The Grocer this weekend to find out what it is.

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