PROFITS at Marks & Spencer dropped by 18.6 per cent as chief executive Steve Rowe warned that plans to turn the business around will hit short term profits. Share in the high street giant dropped 7.67 per cent in early morning trading.
Full year results at M&S showed an increase in revenues of 2.4 per cent to £10.6 billion. Underlying profits did grow, by 4 per cent, but this was hit by a number of factors, including a £50 million provision for mis-sold PPI insurance at M&S Bank. Profit before tax was £488m.
“We are investing to re-establish our price position by sharpening prices and to enhance service by putting more employees into our stores,” said Mr Rowe. “These actions, combined with the difficult trading conditions, will have an adverse effect on profit in the short term.”
As the company continues to grapple with its position as a modern clothing retailer, its food business continued to impress, outperformed a competitive market.
The group announced plans to put customers at the heart of its business, with immediate action being taken to recover and grow its clothing and home division.
Part of this growth strategy involves lowering prices and reducing the number of promotions. M&S said it would also enhanced customer experience with sharper ranges, better availability and investment in store staffing.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article