Updates

Marks & Spencer - Pulls back sales growth targets

July 2012

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â€œOvertaken by events, dear boyâ€ is a famous quote that Marks & Spencer chief Marc Bolland might have used to describe the reason for scaling back his three-year sales growth target range from an original Â£1.5bn-Â£2.5bn. to just Â£1.1bn - Â£1.7bn. Indeed, given that one economist has just calculated that 3.5% of the 4% reduction in UK economic output since 2008 was accounted for by collapsing consumer spending (worse than any other G8 country) there has simply been nowhere for Marks & Spencer to go. Having said all that, the 1.2% fall in underlying pretax profit to Â£706m in the year to 31 March on a 2% rise in group sales to Â£9.9bn was slightly better than brokersâ€™ forecasts. With eps virtually unchanged at 34.9p, t ...

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